The Scarab
by BK the irregular
Summary: An exile from the gods of ancient Egypt surfaces in California, at the Mouth of Hell. (Crossover with Stargate: SG-1) (complete)
1. Gate Crasher

(Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Fox own these people. Except for the gang owned by Double Secret Productions, Gekko Film Group, and MGM. It'll all become clearer in time. I hope.)  
  
Sunnydale, California, August 2000  
  
"More mashed potatoes, Riley?"  
  
"Thanks, Joyce, but I couldn't eat another bite. My compliments to the chef," Riley said with a grin.  
  
Joyce cleared her throat and beckoned her head to Buffy. Riley looked over, gasped theatrically, and said, "She cooks too?"  
  
"Yep. Cook, slay, leap tall buildings at a single -- well, two or three bounds anyway."  
  
Willow giggled. "She can do tall fences at one bound, though." After a glance from Tara: "What? I've seen it."  
  
Joyce glared at her daughter. "Is that how you were able to break curfew so easily all those times?"  
  
Buffy ducked her head as she nibbled at the last of her salad. "Yeah. I'd go out, save the world, then do a standing jump to my window. That or the gymnastic thing. But I was under strict adult supervision."  
  
"Honey, Giles doesn't count in that regard."  
  
"Why not? He's an adult. Okay, the one time you really got to know him you were both adolescent-minded..."  
  
Joyce flushed. "Wait until you have a child of your own, Buffy. I guarantee you she'll have you tearing your hair out."  
  
Riley frowned. "Huh?"  
  
Tara matched his frown. "I'll second that huh?"  
  
Buffy looked at her mother, then put on her best cat-ate-the-canary smile. "This was a couple of years ago. The Mayor was setting up for a demon sacrifice, he needed the whole town out of commission, so he contracted out to Ethan Rayne - you met him, Riley, he's the one who turned Giles into the demon that time - anyway, Ethan managed to get the whole town flooded with this candy that turned everyone into teenagers. And with Mom being a wild child, and Giles being rebel-without-a-clue, one thing led to another and--"  
  
"Who wants dessert?" Joyce broke in.  
  
"--and we're having tiramisu. I'm in, Mom."  
  
"Me too," Willow chirped.  
  
Riley and Tara smiled and nodded. "So where is Giles anyway? And Xander?" Riley asked.  
  
"Xander's off with Anya somewhere. Giles said that he'd be by later; he thought he'd figured out why the demon population's grown so quiet the past few weeks," Buffy said.  
  
"Gee, you think it might have something to do with the carnage in the Initiative?" Willow asked with a bit of razz in her voice.  
  
"I dunno. I mean, things kinda picked up after we took Adam down, and then all of a sudden it dropped off the radar. The past week or so I haven't seen a thing." Buffy frowned. "Not even Spike."  
  
Tara got up to collect dishes. "Sounds ... sounds like it's a good thing. You know, gift horses and all that."  
  
"Yeah, but I don't want to get caught off guard, you know?"  
  
Tara nodded.  
  
And screamed as the door to the house got blasted off its hinges.  
  
Two vampires lunged at the door, bouncing off the threshold. Buffy and Riley jumped aside to scramble for weapons; Buffy came up with a poker from the fireplace, Riley pulled out a baton that he snapped open with a flip of his wrist. Willow jumped to get Tara out of the way, and Joyce shrieked and jumped back into the dining room.  
  
The vampires stepped back, and two demons came in, each bearing a long, elaborate staff with a flared end and an odd grip halfway down. Behind them came a third demon, carrying an odd device in its hand, and something that looked human - if very oddly dressed.  
  
Riley jumped at the first demon, drove it back to the door, only to be beaten back by the second. Buffy drove the second demon back with a roundhouse kick to the face, knocking it into the stairwell.  
  
Then the third demon raised its device. The thing snapped open like a cobra preparing to strike, and spat a bolt of blue fire at Riley -- who went down like a ton of bricks.  
  
Joyce took one step to try and drag Riley out, only to be tagged herself as the device shrieked and spat fire again. Buffy jumped to help her mother - and suddenly every nerve in her body was aflame. *Slayer strength to the rescue,* she thought. *Right now I'd be unconscious ... instead of wishing I was.*  
  
She collapsed, twitching, trying to will her legs to move.  
  
Tara muttered something under her breath, gripping Willow's hand, then shouted out, "Ignis inciende!"  
  
One of the demons burst into flame, catching one of the vampires outside in the fireball; the demon dropped its staff, jumped out to roll on the lawn, while the vampire tried to do the same, losing the race and disintegrating into dust.  
  
The demon with the zapping device turned it on Tara; an electronic shriek, and Tara was down.  
  
Willow stood up, grabbed the fire tongs, and swung at the thing; senseless, mindless, she threw the tongs, catching the demon in the throat.  
  
Then the other staff-wielding demon leveled its staff at her.  
  
The narrow end of the staff split open with a buzz of electricity.  
  
Willow put up her hands to defend herself...  
  
...and the staff spat out a flame-colored bolt that slammed into her chest, sending her flying back into the fireplace with a crash.  
  
Buffy moaned - she wanted to scream but she couldn't get her mouth to work right - and watched as Willow took one step forward, coughed once, twice ... a trickle of blood came from the corner of her mouth ... and she fell face first to the ground.  
  
The human-looking creature stepped into the house. It looked over at the bodies strewn all over, paying special care to Willow's crumpled form. It nodded at the door --  
  
--and Spike came walking in.  
  
"Bring her," the man-creature said, its voice harsh and guttural, and Spike nodded solemnly.  
  
"Yes, my lord Kheper," Spike intoned, without the slightest mocking tone, and gently picked Willow's broken body up.  
  
That did it. Buffy surged, got back to her feet unsteadily, and reached for a stake. "You're dead," she rasped. "You hear me? You're dead."  
  
Kheper strode to her and raised a hand, and Buffy found herself transfixed. "I will decide who dies," he said. His eyes flashed white, glowing eerily. "Life and death are the province of your god." His hand was glowing - actually it wasn't the hand itself, but a glowing jewel in a ribbon-like bracelet that entwined the palm of his hand - and Buffy felt as though her head were ready to explode.  
  
"You will understand in time," Kheper said. He nodded to the demon with the snake-like thing in its hand, and it spat blue fire at her again.  
  
Buffy screamed this time, and whether her voice faded from the pain, or it was just her consciousness fading out, she didn't know and didn't care.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
*river*  
  
*flash*  
  
*marketplace*  
  
*flash*  
  
*pyramid*  
  
*flash*  
  
*procession - a young man - eyes glowing - symbol of the sun at his back*  
  
*flash*  
  
*Spike - and Willow - Willow with a hole in her chest - "What looks alive is not always alive," Spike said - Willow looked up and the hole in her chest was healed, closed, whole again under the burn - "Death isn't always forever," Willow said*  
  
Buffy looked, and the desert was at war. She looked and saw someone fighting a creature with an eagle's head - it was the First Slayer - no, Kendra, no, it was Faith, wait, it was Buffy herself off in the distance --  
  
--and then it was the First Slayer again, brought before the golden bright young man with the jewel in his palm, and he was anointing her, no, killing her, breaking her mind apart and his eyes were flashing--  
  
"Know the power of your god," he said, and then the desert erupted in flame.  
  
Buffy looked up to face a ... man? It had the stylized head of a cobra, carried one of those killing staffs, but the head was metal--  
  
--it opened, sliding back like a visor, to collapse into a collar around the man's neck. So he was a man, only huge. He looked down at her, and the sun glinted off a gilded oval on his forehead, creating a halo around his ebony shaved skull.  
  
"False god," he said, and suddenly he was in normal clothes, but still with the golden brand on his forehead. "Dead false god."  
  
Then there was Giles, thank God, only there were two of him, and one wasn't Giles, she must have been thrown by the glasses...  
  
Giles-but-not-Giles said, "You have to understand that the power they have, they stole."  
  
Then Giles-really-Giles said, "The power you wield is yours by right."  
  
Golden-forehead-guy loomed over her, and he sounded an awful lot like Giles as he said, "Buffy? Buffy?"  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"...Buffy?"  
  
It was Giles, really Giles, and everyone was hovering around her. Mom, and Riley, Tara, Xander, Anya-  
  
"Giles?"  
  
"Thank God you're all right. You've been unconscious nearly fourteen hours, Buffy."  
  
"Wow," Buffy answered. "It was weird. I had this dream, Giles - the house got stormed, everyone was getting bug-zapped and this Egyptian-looking guy walked in, and he had Spike wrapped around his finger, then it got real weird, I was in Egypt, it just ... wow. Will, you're okay, right?"  
  
Nobody spoke.  
  
Buffy counted faces, and her heart turned to ice.  
  
No Willow.  
  
"Buffy ... the attack was real."  
  
Buffy blinked. "But Will ... she's okay, right?" she asked, her voice cracking.  
  
Giles blinked back tears. "They killed her, Buffy. Willow's gone."  
  
end part one 


	2. Depression, Anger, and a River in Egypt

(Standard disclaimer. Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Fox, yada. Double Secret, Gekko, MGM, yada yada.)  
  
"Giles."  
  
"Kheper comes from the old Egyptian, referring to a scarab - sacred beetle - one of the symbols of the Sun God Ra."  
  
"Giles..."  
  
"There's also a reference to a Pharaoh Nub-Kheper-Ra Intef, one of the more powerful rulers of the 11th Egyptian Dynasty. Perhaps there's a connection there--"  
  
"GILES!!!" Buffy screamed. "I don't care, okay? I don't care what the God-damned family tree of this thing is, I don't care if it's the resurrected mummy of King Tut! All I care about is finding this thing. We go, we find Spike, we beat this Kheper's location out of him, then I tear Spike limb from limb and we send Kheper back to his Sun God Ra, okay?!?" She gasped for breath.  
  
Giles snapped back. "Perhaps you didn't notice, Buffy, but the last time you met Kheper, it was a slaughter."  
  
"So this time we slaughter *them!*"  
  
"No." Giles took off his glasses and looked at her hard. "This time, we learn exactly what we are dealing with. We find out what Kheper is, we learn his weaknesses, we learn what he intends to accomplish by this."  
  
Buffy opened her mouth to argue, but Giles put up a finger. "Once we know what Kheper is about, then we will deal with him. We will find him, we will defeat him, and we will send him to hell." He put his glasses back on. "Slowly."  
  
Buffy slumped in a chair in Giles' apartment, picking up a book of Egyptian mythology.   
  
Giles sighed. Around his apartment, Riley, Xander, Anya, and Tara were all listlessly poring through volumes. He cleaned off his glasses and opened a treatise, then closed his eyes and shook his head.  
  
Tara wiped away a tear. "It just feels so useless. I dug into everything I could find. I ... I ... I must have burned a case of paper printing out everything I could find on the Net about Egyptian mythology at the library." She sniffled. "I told myself it was for Willow ... that we could make it mean something. But it's not going to help. Nothing's going to ... nothing ... nothing..."  
  
Buffy dropped her book and put a reassuring hand on Tara's shoulder. "It's okay. It's okay to cry," she said, rubbing at her own eyes.  
  
Anya dropped her book. "This is hopeless. I'm going to talk to D'Hofferyn."  
  
Five voices as one answered, "WHAT?!?"  
  
"Look, the stories all keep changing as we go through the research. D'Hofferyn's been in charge of vengeance and justice for going on ten thousand years; he was there for all this. I know for a *fact* he had a beef with the Egyptians."  
  
Xander found his voice. "An, you can't just go summon the Vengeance Demon in Chief and say 'hey, how's it been, miss the old job, and by the way, whaddaya know about ancient Egyptian mad dog killers?'"  
  
Anya snorted. "It can't be any less helpful than all this," she said, and walked out.  
  
"An, wait!" Xander called, running after her.  
  
Buffy slumped again. "Does *anybody* have anything?"  
  
Tara looked up. "'Parallel Development of Isolated Cultures on the Egyptian Model.'"  
  
Buffy groaned. "How does that help us deal with Old Neon Eyes?"  
  
Riley snapped his head around out of another volume. "What?"  
  
"Kheper. Eyes flashing like the Hard Rock Cafe sign?"  
  
Riley blanched. "Tell me you didn't say that. Tell me his eyes weren't glowing."  
  
"They ... ah ... were?"  
  
Riley shot to his feet. "I gotta get in touch with someone."  
  
"Who? Riley, what's going on?"  
  
Riley turned and looked down to face her. "Graham. He always used to joke about everything we brought into the Initiative: 'at least its eyes aren't glowing'. Like there was something out there whose eyes glowed, and it scared him the way nothing we ever saw in the Initiative could."  
  
"So ... what is it that has glowing eyes and scares the Initiative?"  
  
"Not the Initiative. Just Graham. And I don't know; I've told you everything I know about it."  
  
"Doesn't help us here!"  
  
Riley sighed and shrugged into his jacket. "That's why I've gotta find Graham."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"Riley, take my advice. Grab your honey, pack a bag, and start heading east. I hear Chicago's nice this time of year."  
  
"Graham, she's not gonna do that."  
  
Graham stopped and poked Riley in the chest. "Then she's gonna die. I owe her for what went down in those caves, so I'm saying: it's for her own good. If this thing is what I think it is, you're not going to want her anywhere near that place."  
  
"And what sort of thing is that?"  
  
Graham sighed. "That's ... need to know, Riley. I'm sorry, but I'm not even supposed to officially remember any of it."  
  
"Come on!"  
  
"Ri, you *know* how it works. Dammit, you were in charge down there, you *know* about keeping secrets!"  
  
"Okay, Graham. You remember Willow Rosenberg?"  
  
"This a trick question?"  
  
"Redhead, short, she came down into the caves with Buffy."  
  
"Yeah. Kinda cute. She was around the UCS campus too."  
  
"This thing killed her, Graham."  
  
Graham sat back.  
  
Riley plunged forward: "This is about blood now, Graham. We can't run; we've gotta shut this thing down. And like it or not, you owe it to Willow to help."  
  
Graham sighed. "Okay, Riley. I'll tell you this much. Before I got accepted into the Initiative, I was ... screened for another program. Makes Top Secret look like public information."  
  
"Go on."  
  
"I can't. Look, Ri, the old joke about 'if I told you I'd have to kill you'? It's like that, only for them it isn't a joke." Graham sighed. "I gotta call this in, though. I still have the number of the guy who screened us, so maybe they can get someone in here who *knows* about it."  
  
Riley shot up out of his chair. "What makes you think they know *anything*?"  
  
Graham put out a hand. "You gotta trust me, Ri. Just this once, you gotta sit back and trust me. This shouldn't take long." He got up, snapped open a cell phone, and punched a complicated code.  
  
Riley stayed seated, but he kept his ears open as Graham wandered into the back of his apartment: "This is Master Sergeant Miller, ident code Initiative-three-two-three-echo-nine-nine-two ... Colonel O'Neill, please. It's urgent."  
  
Riley strained, but the conversation grew too dim; then he realized Graham had turned on a water tap to mask it. *Son of a bitch.*  
  
Two minutes, three, five -- then Graham came out, putting the cell phone into his pocket. "We gotta go, Riley."  
  
"What?"  
  
"They need to talk to you about what happened here. My orders are to get you to Miramar ASAP."  
  
"Miramar?"  
  
"Yeah." Graham threw on his jacket. "Miramar Naval Air Station, that's what the orders are."  
  
"What the hell does the Navy have to do with this?"  
  
"I don't know. Maybe it's just the closest place with an airstrip and some security. The Air Force is flying someone out right now, Riley. They've got someone in a supersonic jet *this minute* getting out to Miramar to hear from *you* what happened last night."  
  
"What the hell does the *Air Force* have to do with this?!?"  
  
"Riley, we gotta *move*!" Graham shouted, grabbing Riley's arm and dragging him out the door.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
Tara drank listlessly from her tea cup. "Did Riley say when he'd be back?"  
  
"No," Buffy answered, sloshing juice in a glass. "Just that he hoped he'd have more to tell us in a little while."  
  
They had reconvened at Buffy's house after deciding collectively that all they'd managed to accomplish with Giles' research material was to get more and more frustrated. Joyce was ministering as best she could, not pushing the conversation, but trying to keep people supplied with tea, coffee, juice, or whatever she figured they needed.  
  
Buffy was still numb. Xander had called in; apparently Anya was more determined than ever to contact D'Hofferyn, and Xander was worried that she'd gone off the deep end. "It's all she knew for a thousand years," he'd said. "She's in a bad state right now, even if she doesn't show it; if she were offered her old job back, I think she might jump."  
  
Now, Giles was frowning into his own tea cup. "It's odd."  
  
Stony glares met that.  
  
"The way Spike was acting, I mean."  
  
Buffy slammed her glass onto the end table. "Yeah. Vicious, evil, opportunistic. *So* unlike Spike."  
  
"Calm, subservient, loyal. Three characteristics that Spike not only does not possess, but has violently rejected in the past," Giles countered.  
  
"OK, so he's a little gaga over this Kheper guy. So what?"  
  
"The vampires at the door. They attacked as though they didn't realize there was a threshold. And you may recall Spike didn't have a single snide remark."  
  
"So, what? He's learned to control his mouth? Hope that means he's ready to spill when I corner him."  
  
Giles stood. "All I'm saying is that there may be more to this than we understand. Something that should be clear to all of us by now."  
  
Buffy was about to snap something back when the doorbell rang. She got up, stalked to the door, yanked it open --  
  
--to face Spike, dressed in weird ornamental garb of some sort.  
  
Buffy didn't hesitate. Her arm went behind her back and came out with one of her more intimidating stakes.  
  
"Wait!" Spike shouted. "Wait - wait - I can explain everything!"  
  
Buffy glared at him through hooded eyes, twisted the stake in her grip, and snarled, "No more talking, William."  
  
She was halfway to Spike's heart when Willow stepped out from behind Spike and grabbed her stake arm. "Buffy, wait! We can explain!"  
  
"Out of the way, Willow! I should have done this a ... long ... time ... ago ... Willow?"  
  
Willow smiled, huddling under Spike's long leather coat. "Hi, Buffy."  
  
"Will, how ... I saw ... what ... Willow?" Buffy stammered, and stepped back into the house backwards. She missed a step, stumbled, and would have fallen backward if Willow hadn't grabbed her hand. "You're ... alive?"  
  
end part two 


	3. Close Encounter

(Standard disclaimer in Part One. Joss, Mutant Enemy, Fox, yada. Double Secret, Gekko, MGM, yada yada.)  
  
"Buffy ... Slayer ... strength ... ribs ... can't ... breathe?"  
  
Buffy squeaked. "Sorry, Will ... it's just ... you're alive!" She parted the front of Spike's coat as it hung around Willow, then quickly closed it again. "And you don't even have a scar, which I wouldn't know except you're dressed like a harem girl for some reason, and what happened anyway?"  
  
"King Tut wanteded her alive," Spike snapped.  
  
Buffy traded glances with the rest of the gang. "So, how?"  
  
"He's got a box that you stick someone in and they get all better, is how. Had me nip Red from the house and drop her in the box, a little while later it opens again and there she is, right as rain."  
  
Buffy picked up her stake where it had fallen when she'd body-tackled Willow in glee, fingered it gently, then rummaged in a drawer and came up with a coarse file. "So tell me how you ended up doing dirty work for a guy who does breaking-and-entering, kills my friends and then kidnaps them." She ran the file along the edge of the stake, sharpening its point. "And right off, Spike? It better be good."  
  
Spike frowned. "Probably better if Red goes first."  
  
Buffy's eyes narrowed. "Quit stalling, Spike."  
  
"Look, if the witch tells her side, it'll make my side look a lot better when I get around to telling it."  
  
Buffy looked aside to Willow. "You wanna stake him now, Will?"  
  
Willow shook her head. "Spike's on our side." She frowned. "Well, maybe not totally on our side, but right now I think he has it in for this Kheper guy even more than we do."  
  
Giles smiled. "So, the enemy of your enemy, Spike?"  
  
"Too bloody right, Watcher. Right now the biggest thing I want is the chance to be there when this bloke gets his neck snapped and his bones ground to flour." He thought for a moment. "Well, that plus money. Bugger took my wallet when he ambushed me."  
  
"So what were you doing working for him in the first place?" Buffy shot back.  
  
"Willow first," Spike countered.  
  
"Will, you understand any of this?"  
  
Willow took a breath. "It's still a little fuzzy, but what I saw was kinda like..."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
Willow gasped for breath, then clutched her chest in terror.  
  
It took a few moments of groping at the place where she remembered the agonizing, crushing pain - but her skin was smooth in the center of the ribcage. Smoother than it had ever been.  
  
Come to think of it, Willow couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so healthy, so invigorated. She opened her eyes ...   
  
... to see what could only be the inside of a coffin.  
  
*Oh God.* She pressed at the lid, but it was solid metal. *Oh God. Oh God. I'm a vampire.*  
  
She began to claw at the lid of the box, trying to get out, get away - she started to see spots in her vision and she gasped for breath.  
  
*Wait a minute ... vampires don't need to breathe, right?*  
  
She held her breath for a few seconds, realized that she actually *needed* the air. Listened very closely ... and heard the blood rushing in her ears, the rapid-paced thumpa-thump of her heart. Her living, beating, panicky, racing heart.  
  
She realized that her breathing, while it meant she was alive, also meant she was going to run out of oxygen pretty damn quick - maybe she could somehow let Tara know - maybe a spell - something - anything -  
  
She was on the verge of panic again when the cracks appeared in the lid of the box. It split open, the glimmering light inside the box fading, and suddenly she was free.  
  
Or as free as you could be when you didn't know where you were - and four people (loosely speaking) standing guard.  
  
They turned to face her. The one who had led the assault on Buffy's, the one with the glowing eyes, smiled. She could almost see him as attractive, in an odd, swarthy way - though the fact that he'd already tried to kill her once helped keep her grounded in reality.  
  
"Welcome, Willow."  
  
"Wh ... how did you know my name?"  
  
"Do not question how your god knows what he does."  
  
Willow rolled her eyes, and before she could even think, she was saying: "My god doesn't exactly pal around with demons and vampires, you know."  
  
His eyes flashed, he raised his hand, and Willow saw a flash come from the contraption wrapped around the palm of his hand. "Do not try my patience, Willow. You may ascend to great glory at my side ... or you may have to die a hundred deaths before you realize my power."  
  
Willow gulped. "Ah ... I'll be good. I'll be good, I swear. So ... you know my name, can you tell me yours?" *Smooth, Willow. Real smooth,* she thought acidly to herself.  
  
"I have held many names over the many years. I ruled the Valley of the Nile as the pharaoh Nub-Kheper-Ra Intef ... but in the days of glory, I was Kheper, the loyal, the Scarab of Ra."  
  
"And ... what does the Scarab of Ra want with me?"  
  
"You possess the power of witchcraft, Willow. You are a force to be reckoned with, even against the power of the gods." His smile widened. "They did not understand the true power of the underworld, Willow. They did not realize what I now know, that I can command an army more powerful than any they could set against me."  
  
Willow looked around. "You mean an army of demons."  
  
"Crude words for magnificent creatures. Come, Spike." He beckoned to Spike, dressed in odd vestments, and Willow suddenly realized that her own clothing was gone, replaced with something out of "The Mummy".  
  
"Your vestments were burned," he said, the deep modulated voice going even lower. "And even if they were not, they are unworthy of my witch queen."  
  
"Witch ... queen?" No, that didn't sound good. "But I hardly know you! And ... not that it isn't sweet and all, but I'm ... seeing someone," she continued, trying for a sheepish, disarming smile.  
  
Kheper frowned. "Do not mock me, child. Your old life is over. You will not return." He smiled again. "You may choose the form in which you will serve, though."  
  
Willow frowned, puzzled. "Yeah, I was wondering."  
  
"Wondering?"  
  
"I mean, you've got creatures working for you that normally wouldn't do that. Spike ... I know Spike, and right now, he's not acting like ... well ... you know, Spike."  
  
"Ah, yes. The nish'ta. It allows me to extend my will over my followers more easily ... though it dulls the intellect as well. And if you are to use your power to serve me, you will need that intellect."  
  
Willow bristled. "I will *never* serve you. You ... you ... you shot me!" She took a breath. "And I have friends, too. Powerful friends. They won't let you use me."  
  
"Then we will find another way. Spike."  
  
Spike stepped forward. "Yes, my lord?"  
  
"If you turn her, she will be subject to your will, no?"  
  
"I will have some influence, yes," Spike said woodenly.  
  
Kheper raised his hand, and Willow found herself being pressed back into a corner, into a cage. "Then make it so."  
  
Spike advanced on Willow - she couldn't move, the pressure from Kheper's gesture was freezing her, Spike was wearing his game face now, showing his fangs, lunging down on to her throat---  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"You BIT her?!?" Buffy shouted, dropping the wood file and raising her stake again.  
  
"Hey!" Spike shouted back. "No stakes! You still need me!"  
  
Buffy glowered at him. "You ... bit ... Willow."  
  
"Wait, Buffy!" Willow exclaimed. "He just kinda nicked my skin a little. And if he hadn't, I don't think he'd have broken out of Kheper's grip."  
  
Buffy gave Will a strange look. Then she glanced at Tara, who was looking oddly at Willow, too. Spike was nodding smugly, and Giles was glaring at him while rapidly flipping through a printout of an article.  
  
"What are you talking about, Will?" Buffy asked.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
Spike rolled on the floor of the cage, moaning in agony. Kheper glared, his eyes flashing. "You will pay for that, witch."  
  
Willow shrank back. "Pay for what? I didn't do anything to him! I swear!"  
  
Spike staggered to his feet. "It was ... aagh ... it was me, my lord. I suffered from seizures before I was turned."  
  
"Then it will not happen again, I trust."  
  
"No, my lord." Spike paused a moment. "To turn her, I must, ah, perform a ritual after she falls. I must be alone with my child to do so, or she will not turn, but simply die, and she will be of no use to you."  
  
Kheper nodded. "I will leave guards. Inform me when your ritual is complete."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"There's no ritual for turning a human into a vampire," Giles scoffed.  
  
"Will you let her tell the bloody story, Watcher?"  
  
"Sorry."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
Willow was shaking now, half with fear, half with confusion, as Spike brushed his fangs against her neck again. She was startled out of her wits to hear his voice whisper in her ear:  
  
"Play along, love."  
  
Then his mouth closed over her neck again. He gripped her neck hard ... but his teeth were barely grazing her skin, not even drawing blood.  
  
Willow quickly began moaning, trying for a good imitation of agony. She let it grow softer and softer, more and more quiet, and let herself relax against Spike's grip.  
  
Kheper nodded with satisfaction, said, "Proceed," and walked out of the chamber.  
  
The door closed - and suddenly Spike was all business. "Right, let's get you out of here, Red. The Slayer and the Scoobies are probably preparing to go to war already over all this."  
  
"Spike, what's going on?"  
  
"That wanker there decided he's the new Big Bad, is what. He's got most of his followers either awed or drugged. Must'a been drugs for me; honestly, can you see me falling for his tripe?"  
  
"You bit me."  
  
"I forgot about the bloody chip."  
  
Willow blinked. "How could you forget the chip? It's been, like, driving your whole existence since you got it!"  
  
"Well, I was drinking pig's blood from habit. And up 'til now, I hadn't been up against a human." He shrugged. "Probably why he didn't want to get you on the drug. You'd forget how to do your mojo."  
  
"So how long have you been playing along?"  
  
"Just since the bite." He shrugged. "Never would've thought I'd be grateful for having the blinkin' thing in my head."  
  
"So how do we get out of here?"  
  
"It's sort of an underground complex. Somehow he managed to dig it, I don't know how, but we've got an exit to a sewer line. From there, we can probably get out under cover, see if it's dark yet, and get you home."  
  
Willow nodded. "But the guards?"  
  
"Just act vampy and leave the rest to me," Spike said.  
  
They walked out together. At the door, the two guards - vampires - turned to Spike.  
  
"She is ready to serve our lord," Spike said.  
  
They nodded. Then one of them sniffed the air. "She is still alive."  
  
"What? No, you need to check your nose."  
  
The other vampire nodded. "Something is wrong here."  
  
"No, no, there's a perfectly logical explanation for-" Spike started, then whipped out a device and shot blue electrical fire at each of them. Both vampires collapsed.  
  
Willow gaped. "What is that?"  
  
Spike looked at the odd device. "I can never get its name straight." He found a chair, broke off two legs, handed one to Willow, and rapidly staked both insensate vampires in the heart.  
  
They ran.  
  
They were almost to the complex door when Spike suddnely halted. He ducked into a side door and started ransacking what appeared to be someone's bunk room.  
  
"Spike, what's going on? You forget something?"  
  
"There!" Spike shouted. He came out carrying his black leather coat, began to sling it on over his Egyptian garb.  
  
"Spike, no! We're supposed to get out of here unnoticed, remember?"  
  
"I'm not leaving this behind."  
  
Willow smiled. "Then I'll wear it."  
  
Spike bristled a moment, then slowly handed it to her. She tried it on - it was big, but not too big, Spike didn't have that large a body ... and it also nicely covered up her nearly obscene costume.  
  
They were almost to the door when Kheper called, "Halt!"  
  
Very slowly, Spike turned. "It is done," he said. "I must take her out to feed."  
  
Kheper nodded slowly. "Bring her back soon. We have much to do."  
  
Spike bowed to Kheper, escorted Willow out the door to the sewer, and then visibly shuddered. "Let's get out of here."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"And from there, we just ran all the way here," Willow finished.  
  
Giles looked up. "Did you see much of the makeup of this Kheper's following?"  
  
Spike spoke up. "He's got quite a lot, actually. I saw a few Fyarl, three, maybe four three-eyed Skilosh as shock troopers, a whole lot of vampires, and he's got this odd bloke he calls his 'First Prime'. Don't know if he's a demon or what. Big guy, muscles all over, and he's got some kind of symbol carved into his forehead in gold."  
  
Buffy frowned. "So why are you helping here, Spike? I thought you were still on your evil kick."  
  
"Don't get me wrong, Slayer. Get this bloody chip out and I'll snap your necks and drink your blood in a single night. Just that now, I figure Kheper's your enemy as much as he is mine. And if he's human - I mean he got in the house without an invitation - I can't hurt him. Except by telling you all I know about him and sitting back and watching you tear him limb from limb."  
  
"Well, that's..." Buffy shrugged. "Refreshingly honest."  
  
The doorbell rang, and in a moment, Joyce came back with Riley. Buffy looked at Riley's face - somber on entering, going to fury when he saw Spike with a mug of cocoa Joyce had given him, then to shocked joy when he saw Willow. Buffy couldn't help it - she broke down in laughter.  
  
"I'm sorry," she gasped. "It's just - Riley, you should have seen it, it was like emotional whiplash!"  
  
Riley bristled - then he sighed and began to chuckle himself. He walked over, smiled to Tara. "Mind if I borrow your sweetheart for a second, milady?" With that, he swept Willow into yet another rib-cracking hug.  
  
Tara cleared her throat. "Er ... you're ... ah ... making me jealous," she said with a smile.  
  
Riley put Willow down. "I'm not even gonna ask how right now. Buffy, we've got to talk."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"I don't know why, Buffy, but for some reason the Air Force got real interested in what's going on here." Riley sighed. "I tried to get as much info as I could, but the lady wasn't talking much, just asking questions."  
  
Buffy rolled her eyes. "Great. It's The Initiative, Part Deux."  
  
"Yeah, but there was something about her."  
  
Buffy arched her eyebrows. "What was it? Cute? Strong? Attractive?"  
  
"Scared."  
  
Buffy rummaged through her weapons chest, pulling out stakes, a vial of holy water, then putting Angel's cross around her neck. "So what's the big deal about that? When we went down to take on Adam, I saw a lot of scared people in the Initiative caves."  
  
"Yeah, but Buffy, they *got* scared," Riley countered. "Once they realized they were in over their heads, they became scared - but we started out confident as anything, figuring that we had things well in hand. Like there was nothing we couldn't handle."  
  
"Look where it got you," Buffy commented archly, slinging on a coat.  
  
"I don't know whether it means they've got more sense, or whether we're into something worse."  
  
"So we'll find out," Buffy said. "You want to sweep north from the south side, I'll start working from the north end?"  
  
Riley nodded. "But we should have everyone else out there too, I think. Giles, Xander, Willow ... OK, maybe Willow's had enough excitement. But the more we have out there, the merrier." He pulled out a pistol from his waistband and pulled its slide.  
  
Buffy arched her eyebrows again.  
  
"It'll slow 'em down at least," Riley said.  
  
"If you say so."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
Spike had gone home to that crypt of his, Xander had come back and been quickly briefed in, and the patrol was well underway. Buffy listened hard, trying to sense that vibe that vampires sometimes give off.  
  
She was honing so hard, in fact, that she nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard the explosive *pop* sound at the edge of Sunnyrest Cemetery. She wheeled around to see a ball of light go streaking off into the distance, heard the sounds of a struggle, and was off like a sprinter.  
  
She saw it soon enough: two men - maybe men, anyway - struggling, going hand to hand, struggling to grab hold of one of those odd staff things like the one that had blasted Willow. One of the combatants had the usual vampire look - furrowed brow, bad fashion sense, nasty teeth - while the other looked rather like Shaq, maybe not as big, but still as imposing as a tank, dressed in black much like the Initiative used to wear.  
  
The vamp got hold of the staff and swung at Tank, smashing him in the face with the broad end; Tank went down hard but sprang back up, delivering a series of kicks that spun the vampire around like a top. Tank grabbed the staff and swung back at the vamp, flattening it, but the vampire was as resilient as his opponent, and spun back to his feet to lash back out.  
  
Buffy ran harder. She grabbed for one of her stakes and got a throwing grip on it.  
  
The vamp grabbed the staff and swung at Tank's head once more, knocking off Tank's cap - they grappled for the staff - it went off once more, shooting a bolt skyward - the vampire bared its teeth and lunged for Tank's throat--  
  
Buffy skidded to a stop, took a quick breath and hurled the stake. It flew like an arrow right into the vampire's back and he stiffened, then disintegrated.  
  
She was just about to make up some lame excuse to explain to Tank what had just happened when she got a good look at him and froze.  
  
Big guy. Muscles all over. And in the center of his forehead, a raised oval symbol in gold.  
  
Buffy raced up to him, another stake in hand. *We need this guy alive,* she thought.  
  
Then she looked up and thought, *God, he's big--*  
  
He tensed up, his grip on the staff tightening.  
  
Buffy would never understand why she did it - she just lashed out with her foot. He blocked the kick, swung the staff to sweep her feet out from under her. Buffy jumped, dodging the sweep, punched him two-fisted in the solar plexus, and kicked to jolt the staff out of his hands. She caught it in mid-air, shifted her grip so she could smash it down on his skull--  
  
-- and nearly leaped her own height in the air when the thing went off with a sizzling *whump*. The energy bolt shot off into the distance, turning a parked security patrol car into a fireball when it hit, and while Buffy was distracted, Tank hit her with a right hook as strong as any vampire she'd ever faced.  
  
Buffy lost her grip on the staff, felt it yanked out of her hands. Blindly, she grabbed for another stake in her belt, only to find herself facing the business end of the staff, split open in an "X", sizzling with power.  
  
"Hold it!"  
  
Just when Buffy's evening couldn't get worse, there was ... Spike? with a shotgun?  
  
Spike, actually coming to her rescue. Sign of a truly bad day.  
  
Giles and Riley weren't far behind, running hell-for-leather down the paths to the fight. Giles had a crossbow raised, Riley had his Beretta at the ready.  
  
Buffy tucked her stake back into her belt, slowly. "Put it down, pal. Nice and slowly."  
  
Spike frowned. "This isn't him, Slayer."  
  
"Big guy, muscles, golden thingy in the head? Sounds about right."  
  
"I forgot to mention he was white. Kinda slipped my mind, that did, what with the gold forehead thing and all."  
  
Buffy sighed. "He's carrying one of those boom-sticks. Sounds like the people we're looking for."  
  
"I appropriated the staff weapon from my assailant," Tank said. His voice was deep, rich, and incredibly precise.  
  
"Okay," Buffy countered. "So put down that, ah, staff weapon and let's have some answers."  
  
Tank raised an eyebrow silently, but didn't move.  
  
"Four against one, buddy," Riley commented. "Let's just do this easy, okay?"  
  
"Ah, Riley," Giles said.  
  
"I know how to interrogate," Riley answered.  
  
"Yes, quite. I have no doubt. I was merely pointing out--"  
  
Buffy saw it at that point, a laser dot pointing to Riley's forehead, and a glint as another swept over her to cover Spike.  
  
"--that the odds aren't precisely four to one."  
  
Three figures came out of the brush by the cemetery's edge, all in black battle dress, two carrying nasty-looking machine guns, one pointing one of those bug-zapper things right at Buffy. The machine-gunners were a man and a woman, both intense-looking, while the guy with the bug-zapper was, incredibly, wearing glasses much like Giles'.  
  
"You all right, Teal'c?" the glasses guy shouted.  
  
Tank - Teal'c - turned a millimeter. "I am unharmed, Daniel Jackson."  
  
Daniel Jackson nodded. "Good. That's good," he said.  
  
The guy with the machine-gun nodded as well. "Okay, let's put the hardware on the ground, everyone. Nobody else needs to get hurt."  
  
The lady's eyes went wide. "Agent Finn?"  
  
Riley drew back a step. "Major Carter?"  
  
Buffy turned as well. "You two *know* each other?"  
  
"She's the one who was asking the questions at Miramar."  
  
Giles stepped forward, deliberately laying his crossbow on the ground. "Clearly we have some questions that all of us need answered..."  
  
"Ya think?" the guy with the machine-gun shot back.  
  
Buffy sighed, and silently bade farewell to the thought that this might be easy.  
  
end part three 


	4. Ancient Truths

Part 4  
  
"Okay, kids, how about putting away the guns and the sharp sticks?" the crew-cut soldier-type drawled.  
  
Riley let out a breath and holstered his pistol. He glared at Spike, who reluctantly let his shotgun drop down to point to the ground. Buffy waited a heartbeat until the huge dark man raised his staff, pointing the end away from her, then replaced the stake in her belt.  
  
Daniel Jackson, whoever he was, closed the barrel of his bug-zapper and put it away; Major Carter lowered her machine-gun. Crew Cut looked at her and at the dark man with the oval in his forehead.  
  
Carter closed her eyes a moment and shook her head. "They're clean, Colonel."  
  
"Teal'c?"  
  
"I concur, O'Neill."  
  
Riley couldn't help but scratch his head at that; Buffy apparently had the same questions. "Clean from what?" she asked. "And how could you tell just like that? Some sort of 'use the Force' thing?"  
  
Colonel O'Neill ignored that, looked right at Riley. "Agent ... Finn, right?"  
  
"Yes, sir." Riley snapped to attention almost from habit.  
  
"Walk with me." It wasn't a request.  
  
Riley followed; Buffy fell into step with him, but Colonel O'Neill glared at her. "Ma'am, if you'll excuse us."  
  
Buffy stopped short. "Who *are* you?"  
  
"Ma'am ... take my advice. Go home." He raised his voice a little. "All of you should just ... go home, okay?"  
  
Buffy took a step forward, but Riley held out a hand. "I'll try and handle this, Buffy, okay?" He sighed. "Military thing."  
  
* * * * * *  
  
O'Neill led Riley ten paces away and turned to him, glaring. "I read your file, Agent Finn ... what there was of it." He paused a moment. "You know about top-secret clearances, you know about security. So what are you doing involving a bunch of civilians in this?"  
  
"It's not what it looks like, sir. These aren't everyday ordinary people."  
  
O'Neill glanced back at the crowd. "Okay, so maybe they look like they could handle themselves in a bar fight, but this is something else entirely. This is the sort of thing where people get killed if they don't know what they're doing."  
  
Riley didn't answer, just looked at the Colonel.  
  
"Look, Finn, from what you told Carter, this situation is *exactly* what we're here for. We're the professionals, and we maybe just *might* be able to contain this. We let civilians into the middle of this, they'll end up dead. Or worse."  
  
"Permission to speak frankly, sir?"  
  
O'Neill blew out his breath. "Spit it out, Finn."  
  
"Colonel, maybe I'm not the best judge ... but if Mister Jackson over there is a soldier, I'll eat my gun belt."  
  
O'Neill blinked, then sighed, then dropped his head. "Oh, for cryin' out loud," he muttered.  
  
Riley tried to smother the small smile crossing his features; he wasn't sure he'd succeeded. "Sir? Should I ... ah ... am I gonna need Worcestershire sauce for my belt?"  
  
O'Neill sighed again. "No, Finn. Doctor Jackson isn't a soldier as such. And how he ended up in this unit is a long story, and frankly, you're not cleared high enough to know why--"  
  
"DOWN!" Riley shouted; he'd only just now seen the swiftly moving shape, and he thanked God that he still had some reflexes - and that he'd healed up after tearing that damn chip out of his chest that spring. His Beretta was up and leveled, and he waited barely long enough for O'Neill to drop to the turf before double-tapping the demon behind him.  
  
It was a vampire, he noted with an inward curse; two bullets to the head wouldn't stop it, but they might slow it up enough to give him a chance to go for a stake -- no such luck. The thing was still in the suit it had been buried in, in full vamp-face, brows furrowed, eyes an evil red-yellow color, teeth all over the place -- it charged -- Riley fired again, one-handed, the gun jerking wide, and the thing was almost on him when O'Neill hit it in the chest with a three-round burst from his MP-5.  
  
It turned to face O'Neill and growled. The Colonel leveled his machine gun; the vampire charged, stumbled as O'Neill hit it with another three-round burst -- but it didn't fall, just stepped back once more, then charged. O'Neill didn't hold back; he went to full-auto, rock-and-roll, and poured fire into the thing at seven paces, trying to force it back just from the impacts.  
  
The vampire staggered, but held its balance; Riley finally had a stake out, and was about to charge when he heard a whistling screech and a wet *thump*. The vampire stopped, stared dumbly at the wood shaft coming out of its chest -- and disintegrated into dust with a sigh and a dull metallic clatter.  
  
Riley and O'Neill walked up to the pile of dust; O'Neill hesitantly poked at it with a toe, revealing a pile of deformed bullets. Riley glanced back at the projectile's path and saw Buffy, crossbow at her shoulder. He grinned at her.  
  
Buffy wasn't smiling.  
  
Riley was thinking *oh, crap*, and was about to say it when O'Neill broke in: "Okay. What in the *hell* was that?"  
  
"Vampire," Riley whispered, inching back to Buffy and the rest of the gang, pistol holstered, stake in one hand, taser in the other.  
  
"*Vampire*?" O'Neill responded loudly, far too loudly. "As in creature of the night, Bela Lugosi, dead and loving it?"  
  
"Ssh!" Riley had totally forgotten about rank and authority. "Anything, Buffy?" he asked, his voice a loud whisper.  
  
Buffy had her eyes half-closed, narrowing to slits, trying to listen, to hone. She silently, blindly, handed the crossbow to Giles, who quickly drew back its string and loaded another bolt; she slowly withdrew another stake from her belt. Riley's eyes widened; he recognized that stake. Not your ordinary sharpened wood dowel, this; he'd handled it once, and it was sharp as a spear, wickedly curved, perfectly balanced, carved from oak or mahogany or something incredibly tough. Buffy had said it was a gift from a Slayer named Kendra; she called the weapon Mister Pointy. And if she were bringing it out now, something bad was coming.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
Buffy had a very, very bad feeling about this.  
  
The vampires weren't visible, but she *knew* they were coming. Ever since she and the gang had called on the power of the ancient line of Slayers to take on the cyberdemon Adam, she'd felt the power of her gift like never before. She could spot a vampire with her eyes closed now. She could feel them even when they were nowhere to be seen.  
  
Even while they were still clawing their way out of their graves to the surface.  
  
"Get ready," she whispered to Giles and Riley as she got a firmer grip on Mister Pointy.   
  
The first vampire burst out of the ground with a roar, but Buffy was quicker; the snarl turned into a dying yelp as she plunged the stake into its heart, and the thing was dust before its feet ever got clear of the ground. But four others surfaced almost as one, charging not for Riley, Giles, and Spike, but at the military squad that had encroached on the Slayer's territory.  
  
One jumped at Teal'c, but the huge man was moving before the attacker was halfway there, twirling his staff around so the broad flat end smashed into the vamp's face. The vampire reeled, then tried to charge again, but had only made it one pace closer before Teal'c whirled the staff in a vertical spin, bringing the flat end down on the vampire's skull like a pile-driver, ramming the bloodsucker down to its knees in the newly-disturbed soil. Giles quickly raised the crossbow and fired a bolt into the vamp's chest; dust.  
  
Daniel Jackson was scrambling to get clear, struggling to pull out his bug-zapper; Major Carter and Colonel O'Neill both had machine-guns up and ready. Buffy stabbed at another vamp but didn't hit the mark, as the thing had already been knocked off balance by Teal'c's staff; it shook her off and charged at Daniel Jackson, only to be intercepted by Spike.  
  
Spike swung with his bare knuckles, his feet, and used his shotgun as a club, fighting like a dockyard brawler; the vamp kicked Spike aside, tried to go for Jackson, but was stopped by one of those blue lightning-bolts. It staggered, shook its head, and tried to continue the charge, but Spike stepped right up to it, jammed the shotgun under its chin, and fired both barrels. The vamp's head was blasted clean off its shoulders, disintegrating before it ever hit the ground; the body likewise dissolved.  
  
Carter and O'Neill were firing away, trying to force the vamps back with little success; Buffy had to duck under the line of fire to strike out again and again.  
  
*Can't go on forever,* Buffy thought. *I mean, it's not like they've got an infinite supply of vampires, right? Right?* They were making progress, though; only two vamps left.  
  
They were bad enough, but not half as frightening as the creature that suddenly leaped down out of the trees. This one was seven feet tall with a jewel between its eyes, dressed in Oriental-style martial-arts gear, wielding a thin, long, sharp samurai sword in one hand -- and one of Kheper's staff weapons in the other.  
  
Buffy leapt out of the way of the sword-strike, lunged with a foot, knocked the sword clear, tossed the stake to her left hand, and grabbed the samurai sword in midair; she whirled around and swung once forward and back, decapitating a vampire with the foreswing and the backswing - whirled to face the demon, but got her feet swept out from under her, and felt a hammer-blow as the thing caught her in the side of the head with a spin of the staff.  
  
She stumbled, fell, braced as the staff's business end split open with a buzz and leveled at her heart--  
  
--then winced as she heard three short, loud pops. The thing dropped its staff, grasped the now-shattered jewel in its forehead - and disintegrated even as the echoes of the three pops bounced back from the hills.  
  
Buffy looked back, wondering who to thank, and saw Major Carter, machine gun still held at the ready, eye pressed against its scope, laser sight still burning. Carter lowered the gun hesitantly, blinking in confusion.  
  
"Nice shooting, Sam," Jackson said, still gasping for breath and brushing dust off his fatigues.  
  
Carter nodded, then shook her head. "What *was* that thing?"  
  
Giles stood. "It looked like a, uh, Mohra demon. Supernatural assassin."  
  
Buffy blinked. "Mohra - so that's what it was." Off Giles' look, she continued: "Last fall when I went to L.A., one of those things barged in on Angel's office. He kinda hit it in the forehead and it went poof - fastest fight I ever saw." Then she looked oddly at Carter. "How'd you know where to shoot it?"  
  
Carter shrugged. "Body shots didn't seem to be doing much. And the jewel thing seemed to make a good aiming point. But ... demon?"  
  
O'Neill groaned. "For cryin' out loud, there's no such thing as demons, okay? It's ... it's crazy!"  
  
Jackson nodded sagely. "Absolutely. Totally nuts. I mean, come on, Jack, that'd be like saying that the pyramids at Giza were actually landing sites for an alien spacecraft."  
  
"Exactly," O'Neill responded, then stopped dead. Buffy frowned at his look; Jackson's comment was pretty much on target, as far as the world outside Sunnydale was concerned; the two concepts were equally nuts. Perfect supporting argument, Buffy supposed.  
  
So why did Colonel O'Neill look like he'd just lost an argument there?  
  
She heard more rustling, whirled with the sword and stake, only to catch her breath when she saw Xander pounding up the path.  
  
"I heard shooting," Xander said, gripping a fighting axe, looking around.  
  
"Skirmish," Buffy answered. "It's taken care of."  
  
"Oh, thank God."  
  
Buffy couldn't help but smile at that. "Sweet of you to come, though, Xander," she continued. "You're just in time to meet the new government folks."  
  
O'Neill bristled at that. "Look, I appreciate how you chipped in there, but right now the best thing you can do is go home and let us do our jobs."  
  
"Shyeah," Buffy shot back. "Last time a bunch of commandos came to Sunnydale and tried to take charge, they kinda got eaten. This is our home; we know what we're doing."  
  
O'Neill picked up the staff from the disintegrated Mohra, hefted it slightly, then hit a control on it; the split-X end snapped closed. "I think we know a little something about what we're up against."  
  
Giles took off his glasses a moment. "So you are ... what do you call yourselves?"  
  
"Let's just say we're troubleshooters."  
  
"Very well," Giles responded. "I just find it intriguing that a government military ... troubleshooter ... would choose to be branded on the forehead with the mark of the Egyptian serpent god Apophis."  
  
O'Neill opened his mouth and nothing came out. Carter shrugged; Jackson took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt in a very Giles-like maneuver. Teal'c raised an eyebrow almost to the edge of the golden oval on his forehead.  
  
Xander broke the silence. "Anya got something," he told Buffy. "Long and confusing, but I think you'll want to hear it from her."  
  
Buffy carefully slid the sword into her belt, replaced Mister Pointy at her back, and took Xander by one arm while she hooked Riley's elbow with the other arm. "Can you give me a preview?"  
  
"She said it sounded like this Kheper jerk got possessed by a ghoul."  
  
Giles fell into step with them. "Ghouls don't possess people. They may eat fresh corpses, abduct children or unwary travelers and such, but they are not prone to committing acts of possession."  
  
Buffy looked back to the military group. "You guys coming?"  
  
None of them spoke for a moment, trading slightly puzzled looks.  
  
"Information? You know, intelligence?" Buffy asked. "Free of charge."  
  
"Plus snacks," Xander chimed in. "I think Mrs. Summers is making nachos."  
  
Buffy smiled. "You're all welcome to come." She looked around. "Anyone seen Spike?" she asked - then shrugged it off and made for home.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"We have *got* to get control of this situation," O'Neill fumed as they began to trail the younger generation.  
  
"Perhaps we should confide in them, O'Neill," Teal'c said.  
  
O'Neill stopped in his tracks. "*What?!*"  
  
"The young woman fought with a strength that rivals the strongest of any Jaffa. And she appears to possess knowledge of the sort of creatures this renegade Goa'uld is choosing for his forces. Both are powerful assets." He paused. "It is also significant that her elder recognized the mark of Apophis," he continued, absently replacing the ski-cap on his head.  
  
Daniel passed them, shaking his head. "Not necessarily, Teal'c. Apophis was, after all, part of the ancient Egyptian pantheon, so that may be the extent of his knowledge. But it may still be worth looking into."  
  
"Carter? Please tell me you have a *sensible* suggestion?"  
  
Carter shrugged. "Those kids are involved somehow. Our best bet to get them out of the way may be to play along, get what information we can." She smiled as she walked past O'Neill and Teal'c to follow Daniel. "And I could go for some nachos right about now."  
  
O'Neill groaned, put the staff on his shoulder, and looked at Teal'c. "Please tell me you're not thinking nachos."  
  
"I was not."  
  
"*Thank* you."  
  
"But I am amenable to the idea."  
  
O'Neill watched Teal'c pass him, using his staff weapon as a walking stick, then glanced skyward. "Why me?" he asked, before trudging off.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"D'Hofferyn says good luck," Anya announced to the Slayer the moment she walked in the door.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"He said that the sort of demon you're up against is extremely powerful, vicious, cruel, enjoys power and giving out pain, and if you can kill it, you're okay in his book."  
  
Xander looked over. "An, maybe if we started from the top?"  
  
"Okay. Who are *they*?" she asked, giving a less-than-trusting glare to the quartet in military fatigues.  
  
"We're from the Air Force," O'Neill responded. "I'm Colonel O'Neill, this is Major Carter, Doctor Jackson, and, ah--"  
  
"Teal'c," said Teal'c, answering O'Neill's glare with a raised eyebrow.  
  
"Air Force?" Anya asked.  
  
"They, ah, got hold of some high-tech equipment. Classified stuff. Stuff that isn't supposed to exist," O'Neill said, growing more relaxed as he went on. "You've probably seen a bit of it; the staff weapons are highly experimental, and they may have even more of that."  
  
"That kit didn't come out of any Air Force shop," came the cockney voice from the kitchen. Spike came in, mug in hand, nibbling on a nacho chip. "Not unless you're going to tell me that they made a hyperbaric healing chamber or some claptrap like that with Egyptian scribbles all over it."  
  
"A sarcophagus," Jackson whispered. O'Neill glared again; he seemed to be getting in a lot of practice with that glare, Buffy noted, not that it was doing much good.  
  
Xander broke the tension. "Anya, what'd D'Hofferyn tell you?"  
  
"Basically, when you go back to ancient Egyptian times, and you hear about the gods, Ra, Anubis, Isis, Set, Osiris, Hathor, Apophis, Horus, and so on, they were actually some sort of demons that possessed people. They called themselves ghouls."  
  
"Ghouls do not possess people," Giles interjected.  
  
"I didn't say they *were* ghouls," Anya responded tartly. "I said they *called* themselves ghouls. They didn't come from our plane of existence, either; they traveled from some other dimension using some sort of artifact they called the 'Doorway to Heaven'. Although I doubt that they came from the traditional heaven. Anyway, they took on the roles of the gods from the mythology the Egyptians had already created, and they managed to cause a lot of misery. Ra was in charge; the rest of the ghouls were under him, kinda resentful at times. Including our mystery guest, Kheper. He was kind of a small fry."  
  
"The same Kheper?" Giles asked.  
  
"Sounds like it," Anya answered. "D'Hofferyn said you could tell a ghoul because it would talk with a deep reverberating voice, and its eyes would glow. Anyway, about five thousand years back, there was a revolt, and they chased the ghouls away, back through the doorway, and then they destroyed or buried it or something." She took a breath. "He also said that they could take people over, either through mind control or possessing them outright. He didn't know the mechanics, except that one of his vengeance demons got taken that way, turned against him."  
  
Buffy cringed, looked at the Air Force contingent. Nobody was saying a word. "Oh ... kay. How about we get a little food and start with the planning?"  
  
"Would you, ah, excuse us?" Jackson asked, ushering his colleages into the hallway.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
  
"I don't know how," Daniel whispered, "but they *know*."  
  
"Oh, come on," O'Neill argued.  
  
"You don't think that someone being taken by a Goa'uld could be mistaken for demonic possession? And the interdimensional gateway she was talking about - 'doorway to heaven'? That's the classical translation of 'Chapa'ai'."  
  
Carter's eyes widened. "So somehow, they've got this distorted-but-oddly-accurate picture of the Stargate and the Goa'uld? How's that possible?"  
  
Daniel shook his head. "I don't know. But someone could easily get that picture if they saw the inner workings of the System Lords back in the days of ancient Egypt. And if the Goa'uld we're dealing with is Kheper, we could have a problem."  
  
"There has never been a System Lord Kheper," Teal'c stated flatly.  
  
"Okay, Kheper wasn't a System Lord," Daniel countered. "From what I can gather from the records, he was sort of a flunky, maybe something symbolic. 'Kheper' originally was the name of the scarab that signified Ra, but from the records I could find, he was an aide to Ra himself, but apparently fell out of favor for some reason. And there was also a pharaoh Nub-Kheper-Ra Intef, in the seventeenth dynasty. Could be that was Kheper's first try at grabbing power for himself."  
  
"So we've got a mid-level Goa'uld who wants to become a big-time Goa'uld," O'Neill drawled.  
  
"How do you know?" Carter asked.  
  
"He is a Goa'uld," Teal'c responded, simply and surely, and that was that.  
  
"Okay, that was a dumb question," Carter acknowledged. "But how do *they* fit in?" she asked, jerking her head to indicate the growing group at the living-room table.  
  
"I don't know, experts on ancient lore, perhaps? Researchers into ancient cults and such?"  
  
"You don't have the slightest idea, do you, Danny?" O'Neill asked with a wry smile.  
  
"Not ... a ... clue."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"Spike, what are you doing here?"  
  
"Enjoying your mum's cocoa, Slayer. Can't a bloke stop by for a cuppa? And maybe these commando types can tell me how to get out this bloody chip."  
  
"They're not the Initiative, Spike," Willow said soothingly. "I don't think they even know about the chip."  
  
"Then who are they? A newfangled demon sets up camp and these wankers show up. Not a bloody coincidence, Slayer."  
  
Teal'c had stepped back in the room; when he heard that, he visibly froze. "You are the Tarith'na?" he whispered.  
  
Buffy blinked. "The whuh?"  
  
"Tarith'na. The Slayer," Teal'c stated. Then he whirled to face the others. "We must tell them everything."  
  
The rest of them spoke up at once.  
  
Carter: "Teal'c, what are you talking about?"  
  
Jackson: "I don't think that's such a good idea..."  
  
O'Neill: "Teal'c, are you nuts?"  
  
Teal'c took a breath, then glanced back at Buffy. "She is Tarith'na, slayer of monsters. Twice she was born on Chulak to raise the people in revolution, only to be betrayed and murdered by the false gods. Now she faces the Goa'uld here; if she does not understand her enemy, she will fall once more, and possibly all of the Tau'ri with her."  
  
end part four 


	5. Modern Secrets

(Author's note: yeah, I know it's been an eternity. Real Life intruded pretty dramatically on my writing, but I'm back. Hope you can forgive the delay.)  
  
(Standard disclaimer in Part I.)  
  
  
Part 5  
  
There were a lot of questions Buffy wanted to ask, like "who's this Tarith'na?" and "what's Chulak?" and "false gods?" and "you know about the ghouls?" and "what are you talking about, Tau'ri?" and "are you telling me I died twice and didn't even know it?"  
  
All that came out, though, was an inarticulate "hunh?"  
  
Basically, Teal'c's speech was meaningless to her. Judging from the incredulous sputtering reactions of his companions, though, he'd just given out one hell of a lot of information.  
  
At times like this, there was pretty much only one thing Buffy could do.  
  
"Giles?" she pleaded.  
  
Giles frowned and rubbed his forehead. "It's nothing I've heard before, but perhaps there may be some references in the--"  
  
"Okay, everyone ... stop - right there," O'Neill commanded. He glared at his companions - subordinates? - and beckoned with his head to the kitchen.  
  
Jackson and Carter stepped forward; Teal'c held his ground.  
  
O'Neill cleared his throat.  
  
"O'Neill, do you doubt that we face a Goa'uld?" Teal'c asked, hefting the ornate staff he carried.  
  
"Uh, *no*," O'Neill countered pointedly. "Which is why it's our problem, not theirs."  
  
"You are only partially correct, O'Neill," Teal'c pronounced. "There is also no doubt that the creature that attacked us was among the Goa'uld's forces. Yet I believe none of us have ever seen such a creature before."  
  
Jackson raised an eyebrow. "I don't know if I'd say that," he ventured carefully.  
  
"No, Daniel Jackson. I know to what you refer, and the creature we faced tonight was nothing I have ever seen." He paused, inclined his head to Buffy, then Giles. "And yet our hosts not only knew it by sight, but knew how to dispatch it."  
  
O'Neill shook his head. "I was there, too, Teal'c. And as I recall, Carter was the one who blew it away."  
  
"No, sir, Teal'c's right," Carter said. "I got lucky - but they knew where the vulnerable spot was on that thing." She closed her eyes a moment, then opened them again. "And I know what it looked like, but it wasn't that, sir."  
  
"Major," O'Neill snapped, warningly.  
  
"Sorry, sir," Carter answered. "I know, security. But they've already encountered our target, Colonel; they were at risk before we were even called. If nothing else, they deserve to know enough to protect themselves."  
  
"How tough is locking the front door?" O'Neill shot back. He turned to face Buffy and the gang. "Look, I know this has got to be tough for you, but believe me, the best thing you can do right now is stay out of the way."  
  
Buffy turned to look at the front door, with plywood over the broken windows and hardwood patches where Xander had quickly repaired the ruptured hinges. She glanced at O'Neill and indicated the door. "That door was locked when your friend Kheper blasted his way through it. He came for us, and he nearly killed Willow - and that was before any of us knew he was even in the neighborhood."  
  
"Willow?" O'Neill asked.  
  
Carter frowned at Riley. "Agent Finn, wasn't Willow the name of your friend who was killed?"  
  
"Yeah. I ... ah ..."  
  
Willow smiled sheepishly. "I got better, I guess." She shrugged. "Woke up in a golden box, kinda like a sarcophagus out of one of the old pharaohs' tombs. Except that written in with all the hieroglyphs there was some other form of writing I've never seen before. It wasn't Egyptian, or Mayan, or Etruscan, certainly not ancient Greek or Sumerian..."  
  
Jackson raised an eyebrow. "You can, ah, read all those?"  
  
"Well, I'm not a hundred percent fluent in all of them, but I can tell them apart," Willow said  
  
Buffy smiled. "Will's kind of our resident intellectual. Her and Giles."  
  
"And you are the warrior," Teal'c said. There was no questioning, no disbelief in that deep, rich voice.  
  
"Believe me, it wasn't my idea," Buffy answered defensively.  
  
Teal'c nodded solemnly. "The Tarith'na does not seek out battle," he said. "She is called to it, strengthened for it. In the past, when she came to my people, she was alone, one against armies, and she fell." He looked at the dining room, at the varied faces. "But today, you have allies. If you fight the Goa'uld Kheper, then your fight is ours as well."  
  
O'Neill cleared his throat and nailed Teal'c with a look. "A word."  
  
Teal'c inclined his head respectfully to O'Neill, then turned back to Buffy. "A moment."  
  
Carter and Jackson followed them into the kitchen with trepidation. Buffy looked helplessly at the rest: her mother, her Watcher, her boyfriend, her two best friends and their lovers, and a vampire who'd tried to kill her at least half a dozen times but still got invited over for tea by her mother.  
  
"Aahhhh ... check please?" Xander quipped.  
  
"You know what? Bugger this," Spike snapped. "I'm off. If you lot need me ... then I hope you fry." He turned to Joyce and his expression softened. "Thank you for the cocoa."  
  
"You're welcome," Joyce answered. "You sure you wouldn't rather stay? I mean, this guy sounds dangerous."  
  
"No offense, Joyce," Spike said. "But if my welfare depends on the Scoobies here and the bleedin' Colorado Cuckoos out in the kitchen, I'd have better odds at high noon on Laguna Beach." He spun on a heel and walked out the door.  
  
"Colorado Cuckoos?" Tara asked.  
  
"Air Force nickname," Riley answered. "Their academy's in Colorado Springs, so..."  
  
"Ah."  
  
Giles frowned a second, then began scribbling on a notepad absently. "Willow, did you happen to bring your computer with you?"  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"Okay, I won't ask if you've lost your mind, Teal'c. But we are treading real damn close to blowing open, oh, the biggest secret in Earth's history here, so don't you think we should be a little careful?"  
  
Teal'c nodded. "I apologize for my excessive zeal earlier, O'Neill. However, as you heard, they already know much of the Goa'uld from your legends, and they have already encountered a Goa'uld, his weaponry, and his technology. They have been inside his stronghold, and will likely be able to direct us there."  
  
"Uh, Jack?" Daniel asked. "I agree that we can't just tell them our whole life story, but if they've been targeted, then the nature of the Goa'uld at least has got to be need-to-know information for them. I mean, granted, we don't have to tell them anything about the Asgard, the Nox, the Tollans, or the Tok'ra, but the general gist of the Goa'uld, a run-down on the System Lords, and I think we'd be safe mentioning Settesh."  
  
Carter brightened a bit. "Okay, maybe we take that tack. That what they've heard is right as far as it goes, that the ancient Egyptian gods were in fact otherworldly creatures that were driven off in a rebellion, but some of them slipped through the cracks. Seth was one, Kheper's obviously another. We can tell them that much without compromising anything - but I agree that we can't tell them that we've got a Stargate up and running."  
  
"So how do we explain Teal'c and this Tariff thing?"  
  
"I propose that we tell them of the slave colonies the Goa'uld established, without specifying that they are on other planets," Teal'c said. "If I say that I was born on a slave colony as a servant of Apophis, only to rebel and find my way here, that is the truth. All else is unneccesary. Perhaps we should inform them that their speculations could cause concerns if they were to fall into the hands of the enemy."  
  
"So ... give 'em a stripped-down version of the truth?" Carter asked.  
  
"Okay," O'Neill said. "Ground rules: we tell 'em about Seth and his merry little cult; that should at least clue these people in that we know what we're doing. Anything else, rule of thumb is: if a snake-head who's been out of the loop for five thousand years wouldn't know it, then we don't say a word about it."  
  
He turned back to the living room, then stopped. "No, better yet. Let's get them talking about just what the hell happened to them. We'll fill in the blanks here and there, then tell 'em about Seth and how we had to stop him, and them *maybe* they'll stand aside and let us do our damn jobs."  
  
"That's the plan?" Daniel asked, with more than a hint of doubt in his voice.  
  
"That's the plan."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"...and then Spike tried to bite me."  
  
O'Neill frowned. "Bite you?" he asked Willow dubiously.  
  
"Yeah, but he didn't hurt me. His chip went off."  
  
The Air Force contingent traded puzzled looks at that.  
  
Giles spoke up into the silence. "Spike had an ... incident late last year. He was apparently taken prisoner in a secret laboratory and implanted with a behavior modification device of some sort. If he attempts to harm a human in any way, it causes him ... severe pain."  
  
Carter's hand flew to her mouth. "Who ... what ... who would do something like that to a human being?"  
  
"Spike's not human," Xander broke in. "He's a vampire. Tried to kill us all more than once, but since he got the chip in, he's been pretty much harmless."  
  
"But ... brain surgery for behavior modification? Against his will? Who would do that?" Carter persisted.  
  
"Same folks that sign your paychecks, ma'am," Xander answered with a little bite in his voice.  
  
Carter swallowed, looking pale. Riley broke in. "It was my old assignment. The Initiative. We were funded through Washington, from the NID Office in the Pentagon, I think. Professor Maggie Walsh was initially in charge, but after her, we came under direct military control. First Colonel Haviland, then Colonel MacNamara."  
  
Shock gave way to dismay. The disgust remained on four faces. "Please tell me you didn't just say you worked for the NID," O'Neill groaned.  
  
"The Initiative was an autonomous unit," Riley answered. "NID just shelled out for equipment and civilian salaries."  
  
Jack O'Neill rubbed his face in his hands. "I just know I'm going to regret asking this. What were they *buying* with that money?"  
  
"Research into demons. Ways to control them, harness them," Riley said. "We were making some progress, too, but nothing really substantial."  
  
"So what stopped you?" Carter asked.  
  
"One of the projects got out of control." Riley took a breath. "Adam. Hybrid of human, demon, and technology. Went rogue, launched an attack to take over the whole Initiative, create an army of soldiers like him. We stopped it, but ... it wasn't cheap."  
  
"So what you're saying is, for the good of the nation and the continued supremacy of the human race, the Pentagon in its infinite wisdom paid a group of mad scientists to create a cyberdemon. Which, like any good self-respecting video game monster, broke out of control and decided to try and take over the world." O'Neill rolled his eyes. "This should be surprising me. This should be leaving me at a total loss for words. Why am I not surprised?"  
  
"You've grown cynical in your old age, Jack," Jackson quipped.  
  
"Nice," Jack snapped back.  
  
Xander put down a glass. "Anyway. Hopefully now you understand: it's nothing personal when we say we don't trust you guys as far as we could throw you."  
  
"Okay, *that* was the NID. We are *not* the NID."  
  
"Then who the hell are you?" Buffy asked.  
  
"We ... can't tell you."  
  
Buffy stood abruptly. "Giles. The Initiative knows about me, which means the government knows." She turned to face O'Neill and company. "I'm the Slayer. Vampires, demons, monsters ... I'm the one who has to face them down. Giles is my Watcher; his job is to provide me with what I need to know to fight them, so whatever I need to know, he needs to know. Xander and Willow ... they're my friends, they've been in this fight for almost four years now, and I wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for them, so whatever's out there tonight, they're in." She took a deep breath. "Don't ask me why, maybe I just drew the short straw in a previous life, but I'm the Chosen One. I didn't ask for it, didn't go looking for it, tried more than once to walk away from it, but this is what I do." Now she was the one to fix O'Neill with a glare. "So with all due respect ... what do you guys have to do with it?"  
  
O'Neill cocked his head to Jackson.  
  
"Basically, what your friend said about the Egyptian gods ... it's true. They were in fact parasitic creatures using humans as hosts; they were driven away about five thousand years ago, through the gateway they used, the ... Doorway to Heaven. The thing is ... not all of the creatures left."  
  
"You mean evil brain-sucking Egyptian demons still walk among us?"  
  
"We found one of them a little over a year ago. Seth. Settesh," Carter said, fidgeting a little. "He'd managed to set up a cult in Washington state, and we were called in to ... neutralize him."  
  
"Set," Willow whispered. "God of chaos. He was, like, evil personified according to the mythology..."  
  
"Oh yeah," O'Neill confirmed.  
  
"But to successfully impersonate a god," Giles broke in, then paused. "He must have possessed incredible power. How does one ... neutralize such a creature?"  
  
"Killing him seemed to do the trick okay," O'Neill drawled. "Trick is getting in close enough to do the job, or catching him off guard, or hitting him with enough force that those damned shields can't absorb it."  
  
"And getting past his guards," Buffy muttered.  
  
"Quite," Giles said, nodding along with Buffy. "The demons he has chosen as his guards are powerful." He tore a sheet off his notepad and handed it to Willow. "Willow, perhaps you can go upstairs and look through Buffy's demon files? Supplement with a computer search if you need to. Perhaps Tara can also be helpful."  
  
"I ... ah ... I'm not that good with computers," Tara stammered.  
  
Willow smiled, tucking the sheet into a pocket and grabbing her tote bag. "Don't worry. I'll walk you through it." She took Tara's hand and almost dragged her upstairs.  
  
Giles frowned. "Now. You encountered Settesh, you say; what sort of forces did he have at his disposal? And were you able to ascertain his plans?"  
  
Carter took that one. "He'd set up outside Seattle and managed to collect a small group of followers. Basically, it was a cult with him as their god."  
  
Giles pursed his lips. "I seem to recall reading something about that ... a cult of Settesh that would pop up now and again. It never seemed to amount to much; certainly, nothing as aggressive as we are seeing here in Sunnydale."  
  
"Seth was a fugitive from the rest of the Egyptian pantheon, actually," Jackson responded. "He stayed behind when the others retreated from Earth, basically to save his neck. By the time he could have gathered enough power to become a player on the world scene, the world had already changed drastically enough that he never would have been able to hold on to it."  
  
"What about Kheper?" Buffy asked. "Where'd he fit in?"  
  
Jackson closed his eyes. "Well, Kheper was the Scarab of Ra, a symbol of the Sun God. The historical individual, though, is a little more difficult to pin down. I never really found too much."  
  
"I believe I can complete the puzzle," Teal'c said. "I have heard of Kheper; he was made an example by the gods. He was the servant of Ra, but he grew ambitious; he hoarded technology, began to raise an army of his own, in an attempt to gain power and raise his stature among the gods."  
  
"I'm gonna guess it didn't work?" Xander quipped. "Seeing as how nobody seems to have heard of him?"  
  
"Indeed. Kheper was discovered and exiled by Ra, on pain of death if any of the Goa'uld ever received word that he had gathered any followers at all."  
  
Buffy cringed. "Yeeg. Guess that was a fate worse than death for a creep with a God complex."  
  
"Oh, yeah," O'Neill cracked. "Mix that in with an inferiority complex, and ... Teal'c, what's the matter?"  
  
The big man had suddenly stood, grabbed his staff, and was moving to the door, quiet as a cat. He gave a piercing look to everyone, then slowly put a finger to his lips. He gently gripped the doorknob with his right hand, while his left touched something on the staff, causing its sharp end to split open with a crack of ozone.  
  
"Okay," Xander whispered. "Does anyone here *not* have a bad feeling about this?"  
  
O'Neill raised a hand. Off his look, Carter and Jackson did the same, with amused expressions.  
  
"Oh, boy," Buffy sighed, quietly bringing Mister Pointy out from behind her back.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"So where does Buffy keep her demon files?"  
  
"Please," Willow scoffed. "Keeping files is Giles' job. The Watcher's the brains, the Slayer's the brawn, or that's how it was in the old days before Buffy kinda tossed out the rule book." She handed Tara the piece of paper Giles had slipped her. "What we're looking for are those guys."  
  
Tara opened the paper and nearly dropped it. Written in a clear neat hand, she saw:  
  
COLONEL JACK O'NEILL (O'NEIL? O'NIEL?)  
MAJOR SAMANTHA CARTER  
DOCTOR DANIEL JACKSON  
  
Underneath the third name were five scratched-out attempts to spell the name of the fourth visitor, concluding with the words "maybe later".  
  
"He just didn't want them to know we're hacking into the Pentagon to find out about them," Willow continued as she plugged in her laptop and powered it up. "They might have gotten cranky."  
  
"Didn't they try and shoot you the last time you broke in?"  
  
Willow smiled as she began typing rapidly. "We're not breaking into their base, just their files. Besides, these guys seem nicer than most of the Initiative. The guy with the glasses reminds me a bit of Giles, and the lady..." she tailed off, then gave a short wolf-whistle.  
  
Tara hit Willow playfully on the head with a sheaf of paper, then froze when she looked at the title page. "What were those names again?"  
  
"Colonel Jack O'Neill, Major Samantha Carter, Dr. Daniel Jackson, and Giles doesn't know how to spell the big guy's name any more than I do."  
  
"Daniel Jackson. Here!" Tara shouted, thrusting the paper into Willow's hands. "'Parallel Development of Isolated Cultures on the Egyptian Model,' by Daniel Jackson, Ph.D."  
  
"Where did you get it?"  
  
"When you were ... when they took you away, I was printing out everything I could find on the Egyptian gods, and I think I may have gotten three or four by him." Tara shuffled through the papers in her handbag. "This one's weird. It's like something out of the Weekly World News, except with the sensational language taken out and a lot of footnotes put in. Look here," she said, indicating a page. "He actually published a paper speculating on whether the Egyptian gods might have been from outer space."  
  
Willow's eyes widened. "Buffy said that they thought the idea of demons was as crazy as saying the pyramids at Giza..."  
  
"...were landing sites for spaceships," Tara finished. "You don't think...?"  
  
"Let's see what the Pentagon has to say," Willow mused. "Ladies first ... Carter, Samantha. And hey! We got another hit!"  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Oh, no. Has to be different. This is a Doctor Samantha Carter, looks like a paper on astrophysics ... oh, no, wait. Doctor Carter is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs ... hey, here's the link."  
  
"What'cha find?" Tara asked, putting down Jackson's treatise.  
  
"Served in the Gulf War, flew about sixty missions ... wow, she really saw some action ... and to get a doctorate on top of all that, while serving active duty, that's amazing..."  
  
"Willow?"  
  
"Yes, Tara?"  
  
"If you were the government and you were hunting an ancient Egyptian god, why would you send an astrophysicist?"  
  
Willow frowned. "Uh ... theirs not to reason why?"  
  
Tara kissed Willow on the top of the head. "There's a reason. We'll figure it out."  
  
Willow sighed contentedly, only to jump when the computer let out an angry squawk. "Beep," it said in an odd synthesized voice. "Connection terminated at the source."  
  
Tara almost jumped herself. "Is it ... supposed to talk like that?"  
  
"Oh, just a speech synthesizer thingy. I thought it was cool." Willow frowned at the last lines of the readout. "Current assignment classified, top-secret, SGC, no remote access." She stretched her hands, shaking her fingers, then attacked the keyboard again. "Let's try again. AF-dot-mil ... okay ... personnel ... O'Neill, J. Gonna get a lot of them ... here we are! O'Neill, Jonathan, colonel, current assignment classified, top-secret, SGC, no remote access."  
  
"Beep," the computer said again. "Connection terminated at the source."  
  
"My, we're getting testy tonight," Willow shot back.  
  
Tara snapped her fingers. "Hey, maybe there'd be something in the Initiative files?"  
  
"They're not the Initiative ... but maybe they kept backups of other black projects?" Willow smiled. "See? You're good at this. Maybe Riley knows what they did with their-"  
  
They both jumped as they heard a thump from downstairs, followed by an indistinct shout, a buzzing electrical shriek, and another thump. Willow quickly ran to Buffy's chest by her bed, lifted the false bottom, and came up with an axe and a mace. "Here," she called to Tara, tossing her the mace.  
  
"What do I do with it?"  
  
"If you see something that looks evil, hit it in the head," Willow called, rushing out the door and clattering down the stairs with her axe ina battle-ready position.  
  
The first thing she noticed was a sharp smell of ionized air; the second was a creature twitching and moaning on the floor, flat on its back, with one of those staffs near its hand. Teal'c was in a relaxed fighting stance; Jackson had one of the bug-zappers pointed at the creature; and Buffy had a stake out.  
  
"What happened?"  
  
"This creature was spying at the door," Teal'c announced.  
  
The thing moaned again; it wasn't that large, but with its blue skin, red eyes, and spikes all over its face, it looked pretty menacing.  
  
It finally spoke. "Aw, jeez ... didja haveta hit me that hard?"  
  
Buffy strode up. "You spy at our door carrying one of *these*," she snapped, grabbing the staff, "and now you're complaining about getting banged in the head?"  
  
O'Neill frowned. "You can *talk*?"  
  
"Duh," the creature snapped back. "I can sing 'New York, New York' better than Sinatra ever did, too. Look, the whole warrior-demon thing isn't my shtick, guys. Maybe we can cut a deal or something?"  
  
"A deal?" Jackson sputtered. "You ... you want to *deal*?"  
  
The demon sighed. "Look, I didn't want to join up in King Tut's little crusade any more than the rest of 'em. The guy didn't leave us a helluva lotta choice, y'know? Gassed us, knocked us out, and before any of us knew it, we were all gung-ho, worshipping the schmuck as our freakin' *god*, if ya can believe it, and we were all set and rarin' to go take the Hellmouth." He shuddered. "Whatever ya did back there, I appreciate it. I been roped in for seven months and change, and I'm glad I ran into youse guys *now* instead of at showtime. Whenever the hell that is."  
  
Teal'c nodded. "Nish'ta."  
  
"Of course!" Carter exclaimed.  
  
"The same way Settesh did it," Daniel said, nodding.  
  
"Ahh," O'Neill said, in an understanding tone that didn't fool anybody.  
  
Giles took off his glasses absently. "Is that helpful? This nish'ta ... is it a process, a technique, something we can ... ah..."  
  
"I think what Giles is trying to say is: *hunh?*" Buffy said.  
  
"It is a biological substance much like a virus," Teal'c explained. "It renders its victims ... suggestible. If Kheper controls a supply of the substance, then he has the means to control anyone he can take within his stronghold."  
  
"So how come our friend isn't still singing the praises of his god?" Riley asked.  
  
"The electrical shock of the zat'nikatel destroys the nish'ta," Teal'c answered. He turned to the creature. "You are now immune to its effects."  
  
"Anything else it does? 'Cos I don't wanna get back to the Bronx and find out that this thing's gonna turn me into a puddle of goop."  
  
"It will not."  
  
Willow brightened. "So that's how Spike turned back. The chip must've killed the virus."  
  
"It appears so," Giles mused. "Ah ... do you have a name?"  
  
"Sean O'Leary," the creature said.  
  
"Sean O'Leary?" O'Neill echoed incredulously.  
  
"Yeah - ya gotta problem with that?" The demon sighed. "Look, a lot of the Bracken demon colonies came out of Ireland. My clan settled in the Bronx near Fordham Road back after the potato famine. I was only out here on the Left Coast 'cos a cousin of mine died in L.A. back around Thanksgiving, and I wanted to be there for the wake. I didn't sign on to be a crusader for some yahoo with delusions of godhood."  
  
Giles sat up a moment. "You said that he was gathering his forces to take the Hellmouth? Were you speaking ... metaphorically?" Something in his tone was pleading.  
  
"Huh-uh."  
  
"Dear Lord," Giles responded quietly  
  
"Oh, no," Willow moaned.  
  
Xander groaned. "Oh, great."  
  
"Not again," Buffy sighed.  
  
"*Hellmouth*?" O'Neill asked incredulously.  
  
"It's a legend," Jackson said. "Supposedly there were some points where the Earth connected with ... well, Hell. If such portals were opened ... well, it would be bad. But it's just a legend." He looked at his hosts. "It *is* just a legend, right?"  
  
No answer.  
  
"*Right*?"  
  
end part five 


	6. One Girl in All the Worlds

(Standard disclaimer in Part I.)  
  
Part 6  
  
Giles listened to Willow and the Bracken demon, O'Leary, sketching out a floor-plan of Kheper's compound. The demon had been there for the better part of a year, after all, and Brackens were naturally disinclined to take part in the usual apocalyptic madness (the only recorded Bracken assault had been the infamous Guinness brewery raid of 1878, and the only casulaties there had been thirty-nine ruptured kegs of stout ... which, it turned out, had been poisoned by a mad Ulsterite anyway, so the Watchers had written it off as no harm, no foul); any information that could be gathered would be useful.  
  
Teal'c silently observed the map being drawn; Xander was craning to see, with Anya occasionally whispering in his ear; Joyce was sitting on the sofa, quietly sipping coffee and observing the tableau.  
  
He walked over to where the rest of the commandos were sitting and said in a low voice, "I need to clarify a point. What are your intentions regarding the creature Kheper?"  
  
O'Neill shrugged. "Stop him from whatever he's doing. Capture him if the opportunity presents itself, kill him if there's the slightest immediate threat to anyone. Nabbing his stash would be a plus."  
  
Giles slowly took off his glasses and looked O'Neill right in the eye. "I won't tolerate meddling from self-professed 'experts', Colonel." He took a breath. "Doctor Jackson has apparently heard of the legend of the Hellmouth; but let me reassure you, there is a reality beneath that legend. The gateway between our world and the inferno Dante wrote of is less than two miles from here, and if ever it is opened, the result will be Armageddon."  
  
"Why is it always the Hellmouth?" Buffy asked with a frustrated breath. "Big ugly comes into town, and it's always the same: get a mocha from the Espresso Pump, boogie at the Bronze, and try to crack open the Hellmouth before I kill them. Why can't they be original?"  
  
"'Cos that's where the money is," Xander quipped, sauntering over.  
  
Giles blinked. "I beg your pardon, Xander?"  
  
"That's what the bank robber said when they asked why he kept robbing banks; that's where the money is. And if you're a Big Bad looking for unlimited power ... well, the Hellmouth's where the power is."  
  
"Xander, that is..."  
  
"Dumb? Simple? Fortune-cookie evil mastermind philosophy?" Xander asked, beginning to wilt.  
  
"Remarkably sound thinking," Giles concluded.  
  
Xander was searching for a response when Anya came up and kissed his cheek. "Compliment, sweetie. Take the money and run."  
  
"In any case," said Giles, "opening the source of that power will lead to the end of life on Earth as we know it."  
  
"Which would be bad," O'Neill cracked. "So I think we can make keeping that closed our top priority." He leaned forward. "Are we agreed that waxing the evil overlord would pretty much accomplish that?"  
  
"Quite," Giles agreed grimly.  
  
"So we case the place, figure out the best ways in, rustle up some hardware and sweep through and take him apart."  
  
"That's a *plan*?" Xander yelped.  
  
Jackson nodded. "We need more than that."  
  
"Okay, so we sleep on it tonight, we draw up a more coherent plan tomorrow, and -- *don't touch that*!" O'Neill barked at Buffy, who had been carefully moving one of the staff weapons out of the way.  
  
"Chill, okay?" Buffy snapped back, bristling. "It's not like I'm a kid playing with a loaded gun."  
  
O'Neill visibly stiffened at that, his face flushing in anger. Carter quickly put a hand on his arm. "Sir, I'm sure she didn't mean anything by it."  
  
Buffy paled. "What? What'd I say?"  
  
O'Neill took a painful breath and looked over at Carter. "You're right. They couldn't have known." He looked hard at Buffy. "My son found my sidearm one day and decided to play with it. He was ten."  
  
Joyce gasped. "Oh, God ... that must have been awful..."  
  
Giles had to put his coffee cup down, lest the liquid slosh over the rim and betray the attack of shakes that had just come over him. "This must be difficult, then."  
  
"Kids fighting a war," O'Neill mused. "If they really understand what's going on here..." Then his resolve hardened visibly on his face. "Not here, though. Not in this place. I can't have a bunch of civilians risking their lives in a war zone here."  
  
Giles nodded. "Perhaps if you were to ask your superiors for the files concerning the fall of the Initiative, Colonel, your fears might be allayed."  
  
"Agent Finn said it was a bloodbath," Carter said. "You were there?"  
  
"I was," Giles said. "And those ... children ... Willow, Xander, and Buffy, they succeeded in spectacular fashion where the select troops of the government failed miserably. They stopped Adam ... well, they destroyed him. And they made the survivors' escape possible."  
  
"Hey, don't be modest, Giles," Buffy chided. "You were kicking ass too."  
  
"Well, I ... I suppose I was some help, yes."  
  
"*Some* help? Who knew the Sumerian stasis spell that stopped Adam in his tracks? Who was able to put together the ritual that amped me up so I could take him apart?"  
  
Jackson frowned. "Sumerian *stasis* spell?"  
  
"Well ... a great deal of our arsenal here is magical in nature," Giles said. "And the presence of the Hellmouth does seem to amplify magic quite a bit."  
  
"So you could, say, turn someone into a frog if you had to?"  
  
"Transformation isn't easy," Giles responded. "And if done with impure motives, it could have disastrous side-effects on the caster."  
  
"Nuts," O'Neill said wistfully.  
  
"Sir, you're not thinking...?"  
  
"Come on, Carter. Like you wouldn't turn Harry Maybourne into a frog if you had a chance?" That earned him a smothered laugh from his subordinate.  
  
Giles took off his glasses. "I'm sorry, who?"  
  
"Long story. Boring story. Classified. Let's just say that I know this guy who would make an *incredibly* cute frog," O'Neill said, and this time both Carter and Jackson were struggling not to laugh at the mental picture he'd painted, whatever it was.  
  
"Yes. Quite." Giles put his glasses back on. "Be that as it may ... I have to do some research into this. If Kheper does indeed plan on opening the Hellmouth--"  
  
"God forbid," O'Neill broke in.  
  
"--then there are only a few specific times that he can put his plan into action. I have texts at my flat that may provide the answers, but on occasion my translations and maths have been ... a touch imprecise."  
  
"You've gotten better, Giles," Buffy said cheerily.  
  
"Yes, but still, it would be prudent to have someone check my work. Perhaps if Doctor Jackson would be willing?"  
  
"Me?"  
  
"I gather that you have some expertise in ancient cultures."  
  
"Well, yeah, I know a lot of the ancient languages, quite a bit of the history."  
  
"Then between us perhaps we can shed some light," Giles said. "I have a spare room with a bed in the flat if you require sleep."  
  
Jackson sighed. "I don't sleep much these days. But I appreciate the offer."  
  
O'Neill stood up. "We should be going too," he said. "I appreciate the hospitality. Carter, Teal'c, let's pack it up. Daniel, you'll check in with us when you have anything?"  
  
Willow stammered, "Ah, ah, where are you going?"  
  
"Army barracks outside of town," O'Neill answered. "We've made arrangements."  
  
"Oh, you mean Uncle Sam's Vampire Bar and Grill?" Xander asked sarcastically. "Almost as bad as the fleatrap motel on Route 39."  
  
Buffy cringed. "That's right. Public housing; it's not a home, so no invite needed."  
  
"Invite?" Carter asked, frowning.  
  
"A vampire cannot enter someone's home unless he's invited by someone who lives there," Giles said. "You did say the balance of Kheper's forces were vampires, no?" he asked the Bracken.  
  
"Most of 'em, yeah. A few random demons, he actually got the drop on a Mohra--"  
  
"Scratch the Mohra," Riley interrupted. "Courtesy of Major Carter here."  
  
The Bracken looked over at Carter, and his blue spiky face broke into an oddly charming smile. "You whacked a Mohra? Sweet."  
  
Carter and Jackson glanced over at O'Neill. "What?" the Colonel asked defensively. Carter shook her head and smiled.  
  
"Anyway," the Bracken continued, "there's a few nasties still in his core force, but at this point, if he's gonna attack, it's gonna be with vamps. I think I was the last of the straight-up demons he had out there, and only because I'm good at staying out of sight." He looked up at Teal'c. "At least I thought I was."  
  
"Teal'c's good at finding people who are good at staying out of sight," O'Neill said. "That plus a lot of other things."  
  
"The point is that your chances for surviving the night are a lot better if you're in an actual house," Buffy said.  
  
Teal'c stood. "Perhaps that is the case. However, we are forbidden from such a course of action."  
  
O'Neill stood up too. "When did *this* taboo come into effect?"  
  
"I believe it was the year 1791," Teal'c answered. "Officers of the military are forbidden from seizing private homes as living quarters by the Third Amendment to your Constitution."  
  
Joyce cleared her throat. "Does it make any difference if you're invited to stay?"  
  
Teal'c blinked. "The Constitution states that permission of the owner is required. So, I believe, an invitation would satisfy the law."  
  
"Then you're staying," Joyce pronounced. "With those monsters out there, I'll feel a lot safer with soldiers under my roof." She glanced over at the Bracken. "No offense."  
  
"None taken, believe me," the Bracken said with a smile over a cup of coffee.  
  
"Well, technically, three soldiers and an archeologist," Daniel said.  
  
"You're going to do research, remember?" O'Neill reminded him.  
  
"Oh. Right."  
  
"I'll stick around too," Riley said. "Make sure that you all can get a decent night's sleep."  
  
"I think Xander should stay at my place," Anya said. "That way we can have sex without worrying about distracting the soldiers from guard duty."  
  
Xander opened his mouth, closed it, and then shrugged. "How do you answer something like that?"  
  
Buffy looked at the tableau. Giles was hemming and hawing and polishing his glasses - and Jackson seemed to be doing exactly the same thing. Riley was trying to smother a grin, Teal'c looked puzzled, and Carter and O'Neill were exchanging a very odd look.  
  
"Sleep well," Joyce finally said with a chuckle in her voice.  
  
"Not if I do my job right," Anya answered cheerily, and then they were gone, Anya almost dragging Xander by the hand out the door.  
  
"What about you?" Willow asked the Bracken. "What are you going to do from here?"  
  
"I'm gonna head for Willy's. See if there's an easy way I can get back home."  
  
"Good luck."  
  
"Yeah, you too," the Bracken said. "Hope you don't think I'm doing the coward cut-and-run thing -- it's just that I've been here too long. And I'd join up against him, but I don't think I'd last four minutes."  
  
"You think we're gonna get wiped out, don't you?" Buffy said flatly.  
  
"Hey, if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on you. It's my odds I don't like, especially with what Kheper does to anyone who breaks his control. One time one of the Skilosh took a shock from an electrical wire when he was out scouting; he was gone for three weeks, came back looking for blood." He shuddered. "Kheper took one look at him, put on that bracelet thingy, and pretty much char-broiled him from the inside out. I go back and I'm toast." He got to his feet. "I think you got everything I can remember, but if I think of anything else, I'll try and pass it along."  
  
Giles frowned at his notepad. "We appreciate it, of course, but there may not be time enough for it to matter."  
  
The Bracken nodded. "Here's hoping it doesn't come to that. Oh, and Slayer?"  
  
"Mm?"  
  
"Give Kheper my regards. You know, right before you send him back to hell," the demon said, and with a wave, he was out the door.  
  
"I suppose I should bid good night as well," Giles said. "Shall we, Doctor?"  
  
"Yeah, good idea," Jackson said. He turned to his companions: "I'll call as soon as we find anything concrete. If we find anything concrete," he concluded under his breath.  
  
Willow stood as well. "I guess Tara and I should get going too."  
  
Buffy shot to her feet. "Absolutely not, Will. You're staying here."  
  
"Buffy, I think I can take care of myself."  
  
"Will, I know you've got some mojo, but King Tut knows you, he wanted you pretty badly. They spot you out there, they'll be gunning for you." Buffy took a breath. "I think it's safest if both of you stayed the night."  
  
Tara gulped. "Are you sure? I mean ... ah ... is that okay?" she asked, looking at Joyce nervously.  
  
"Absolutely," Joyce said without a moment's hesitation. "I'm not leaving a friend of Willow's out in the cold."  
  
"Is there a problem?" Teal'c asked mildly.  
  
"Don't ask," Buffy snapped back. "Don't tell," she told Tara, with a bit of a smile on her lips.  
  
Teal'c looked back to O'Neill and Carter.  
  
"Later," O'Neill said. "Much later," he continued quietly.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
The Citroen had seen better days, Jackson decided, but it wasn't nearly as bad as being dragged across the Abydos deserts by the ankle behind a mastadge. Actually, though, he thought, looking at the street crawl by, the mastadge would probably have gotten him there faster.  
  
"Let me guess. Speed traps?"  
  
"I beg your pardon?" Giles asked, turning his head.  
  
"The local cops set out speed traps, I take it. Why you're driving so slowly."  
  
"Ah. Actually, the police here are ... really rather lax in their duties. No, this car just tends to get erratic if I take it much past thirty anymore."  
  
"I thought Citroens aged a little better than that."  
  
Giles sighed. "It doesn't help when fair-weather friends drive them into foundation pilings at speed. Frankly, I'm amazed it still runs."  
  
"It could be worse," Jackson muttered.  
  
"I'm sorry?"  
  
*Oops.* "Oh ... I just mean that if worse comes to worst, we can get out and walk. I don't always have that option."  
  
"Driving is probably a lot safer in this town," Giles commented.  
  
"Yeah, I noticed what kind of foot traffic is around," Daniel noted wryly. "What I don't understand is how this sort of thing can happen in a town like this without it being noticed all across the state and probably the entire West Coast. I mean, you don't even find this sort of thing mentioned in the National Enquirer."  
  
"I've often wondered about that myself," Giles mused, struggling with the gearshift in the dash as he took a turn. "I suppose that mentally, a lot of people in the town are not capable of handling the true nature of such events, and as a result, they look for a plausible explanation. Any plausible explanation." He banged the car into second gear. "No matter how flimsy it may seem to a witness."  
  
"A world more wondrous and terrifying than one can imagine," Daniel said. "More things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."  
  
"Quite so," Giles commented as he pulled up to an apartment block. "And it sounds as though you know whereof you speak."  
  
"I wish I could say," Daniel replied, getting out of the decrepit Citroen with Giles and walking up to the apartment. "I've seen things ... terrifying and beautiful, and I can't talk about them. They're secret, they have to stay secret, and I understand why ... but sometimes I almost want to shout it out to the rooftops."  
  
Giles smiled quietly. "I believe I can sympathize," he said as he turned the key in the apartment door. "Make yourself comfortable, Doctor; we may be working for quite a while."  
  
Daniel looked around at the apartment, neat and orderly and stacked high and low with books. Many of them looked like standard references and encyclopedias, some looked like antiques, and a few looked like they had seen a hundred wars or more. One large book on the coffee table by the television was almost drawing him in.  
  
"You've got ... quite a collection here," he commented.  
  
"Occupational hazard. Obscure references are often my life's blood, and in the past year, I haven't had anyplace else to keep the necessary volumes."  
  
Daniel picked up the heavy tome from the coffee table, fingered its spine reverently, then opened it up to the title page. "My *God*," he whispered in awe. "The Pergamum Codex."  
  
"We may need that later," Giles said. "Our first task, I believe, should be to make certain our working calendars are aligned properly."  
  
"But ... the book!" Daniel sputtered. "It's like ... this book is referenced in some of the most obscure works ... and you've just got it sitting out here like a coffee-table book? That's almost like having the original Book of the Dead in your possession!"  
  
Giles handed over a rolled-up piece of parchment.  
  
"No," Daniel breathed in disbelief.  
  
"A copy only, I'm afraid. Rescued from the burning of the library at Alexandria and transcribed from papyrus to parchment in the twelfth century. I haven't had occasion to use the reprint to date, but we may have need of it."  
  
Daniel fingered the edge of the scroll with trembling fingers. "May I?"  
  
"Work first, Doctor, then pleasure. We must determine if an opening of the Hellmouth is near; for that, we must set to the calendars."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
Buffy heard the faint voice from downstairs at the edge of her consciousness.  
  
"Stay on target ... stay on target..."  
  
The sun was up. Willow and Tara had somehow managed to tangle their sleeping bags together, but it looked like they'd restrained themselves to cuddling. Not that Buffy would disapprove, necessarily, but it had been a rough day and night, and she had needed the quiet.  
  
Having four commandos doing rotating watches in the living room had helped her peace of mind. Especially with one of them being Riley; he knew the difference between Buffy needing cuddling and Buffy needing unconscious time.  
  
"It's a hit - negative - negative, just impacted on the surface..."  
  
Carefully, so as not to wake her roommates of the past night, Buffy slipped into something appropriate for breakfast and light combat.  
  
"...let's close it up. We're going in, we're going in full throttle..."  
  
Had Xander found that tape he'd left behind? Because if he was playing that movie at this time of the morning, she was seriously going to kill him. Death by noogies sounded pretty good - and with Slayer strength, it was doable.  
  
*Oh, wait - Anya hijacked Xander last night. Wanted to boink his brains out until sunrise. So who's watching...?*  
  
She quietly went down the stairs to see an odd tableau.  
  
Major Carter was asleep on the couch, looking as young as Buffy herself. Colonel O'Neill was on a mat on the floor, far enough away from Carter for propriety's sake but still awfully close. Carter's hand had flopped off the couch and was brushing O'Neill's cheek.  
  
Riley was by the door, pistol in his lap, cup of coffee by his elbow, relaxing now with the rising sun; and by the television set, sitting in a lotus position on the floor, was the man who answered to the name Teal'c.  
  
"You're all clear, kid; now let's blow this thing and go home!"  
  
Buffy looked at him; the implacable fighting machine had a genuine, childish smile on his face as he watched the climax of the movie, and when the Death Star finally blew, she almost expected him to pump his fist in triumph.  
  
Some guard, Buffy thought; he's so wrapped up in that movie that we could get assaulted by a hundred vampires and he might not notice. She sighed and quietly padded her way over to Riley, ready to give him a shock.  
  
"Tarith'na. Were you able to sleep?"  
  
She froze. "Uh ... yeah. Guess you weren't as wrapped up in the movie as I thought?"  
  
"I have learned to be aware of many things at once. Riley Finn stands guard, but I am ready," he said, laying a hand on the staff weapon at his side. "I rarely have a chance for ... pure enjoyment."  
  
"You really like it, huh?"  
  
"Among my people, stories of hope and triumph against a powerful foe do not exist. All who do so, we learned, are doomed to fail." He indicated the screen, where Princess Leia was draping a medal over Luke Skywalker's neck. "I wish I were able to tell my son this story."  
  
"You had a son?" Buffy asked, gingerly, hoping she didn't step on a land mine like she had with the Colonel.  
  
"He lives yet," Teal'c responded, almost reading her mind. "I have not seen him in several years, but he and his mother are safe and well."  
  
"Why haven't you seen him?"  
  
"It is for his safety," Teal'c said. "I regret I cannot tell you more; but some secrets are best kept, unfortunately. I fear for him if he is discovered."  
  
Buffy took a breath, a piece of the puzzle clicking into place. "The ghouls."  
  
"Yes."  
  
She looked to his forehead. "That serpent guy. Apophis. He's still alive, isn't he?"  
  
Teal'c's shoulders stiffened. "Of that I am certain."  
  
"And he ... God, that's not just decoration, is it? He branded you. Like a cow in a herd."  
  
"Just so." Teal'c slowly removed the bandana from his forehead. "The golden mark is that of a First Prime, the chief warrior of a god."  
  
"You really think...?"  
  
"I did once. No longer," he said grimly. "Now I know the truth. That they are not gods, but parasites. That they can be defeated." He indicated the screen, with the last strains of the movie theme were playing out. "Freedom is more than an impossible dream. The fact that we can discuss such things ... that we can speak of the Goa'uld not as gods, but as the monsters they truly are ... I am prepared to lay down my life to bring this freedom to my home."  
  
Buffy thought about it a moment. "Guess I take it for granted sometimes."  
  
"You are fortunate," Teal'c said. He paused a moment. "Were your friends able to sleep?"  
  
"Yeah, they slept," Buffy sighed. "Probably still asleep." She grimaced. "You don't approve, do you?"  
  
Teal'c paused a moment. "It is not my place to pass judgment."  
  
"And if it were? What would you say?"  
  
Teal'c stood and walked to the kitchen quietly, beckoning Buffy to follow. When they were alone, he said softly, "Five years ago, it was my place to pass judgment on such matters. I enforced the will of Apophis among my people." He paused. "Among my people, a relationship such as that enjoyed by your friends would be punishable by death."  
  
Buffy opened her mouth to protest, but Teal'c continued: "As was failure to properly worship the false god that enslaved us. As was appearance on the streets without a proper reason while Apophis was among us. As was any speech that might even give the slightest hint ... at all ... that Apophis was not divine, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful." He took a breath. "It was even my place to conduct executions for no reason at all, beyond the whim of the god I served. Apophis would wish to emphasize a point ... and he would choose a random passer-by ... and I would kill him."  
  
Teal'c looked Buffy in the eyes. "I have rejected Apophis as a false god, and for that I merit death myself. But I will stand in judgment over others no longer, and for that I am grateful." His face grew somber. "My fears are for matters far greater than whether two people can find happiness."  
  
Buffy frowned. "I don't get it. Why would you do it in the first place, if it made you so miserable?"  
  
"The Goa'uld and the Jaffa are linked in a manner few of the Tau'ri can understand."  
  
"Try me."  
  
"Do you swear that you will never reveal what you see here to anyone?"  
  
"I swear. Now what are you talking about?"  
  
Teal'c lifted his shirt, showing washboard abs ... and an incredibly ugly wound on his belly. The skin looked as though it had been sliced with a hot knife in an "X" pattern.  
  
Buffy was about to ask how he'd been hurt when she saw it. Motion under the flaps of skin, and then a hideous, fishbelly-white, snake-like creature poked its head out from the flaps of skin. Buffy jumped back, backing into the counter. "Wha ... wha ... what is *that*?"  
  
Teal'c tucked the snake back into his belly and pulled down his shirt. "That is a prim'ta. The immature form of the Goa'uld."  
  
"And you ... you just *happen* to have one of those things in your gut?!"  
  
Teal'c took on a look of disgust. "This is how my people serve," he said. "We provide them with a place to grow and mature within ourselves, and in return they grant us health and long life."  
  
"But if you rejected them..." Buffy sputtered, her gorge rising. "Why ... why do you still have one of those ... *things* inside you?"  
  
"Without it, I will die," Teal'c whispered. "I depend on the larval symbiote to protect me from disease, to heal my injuries. It is, perhaps, ironic that in order to fight the enemy, I must carry the enemy within myself."  
  
"What if it takes over your mind?" Buffy asked. "Isn't that what those things do?"  
  
"To a human host," Teal'c said. "Not to a Jaffa. And the prim'ta is still too young to assert control over a mature host."  
  
Buffy blinked. "You're not human," she whispered, the realization only now dawning. "I mean you look human, but you're..."  
  
"My ancestors were human," Teal'c said. "Of the Tau'ri. But the Goa'uld took us, bred us to serve."  
  
"And that ... that Doorway to Heaven that Anya was talking about. That doesn't go to another dimension, it goes to another world, doesn't it?"  
  
"I am not permitted to say," Teal'c answered in a tone that was all the answer Buffy needed.  
  
"Now I get it. When you said I'd been born before ... you mean that a Slayer was called. On your world." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "And when she died ... another was called."  
  
"I was not alive then," Teal'c said. "My master, Bra'tac, saw to the execution of the last Tarith'na ... but not before he witnessed something impossible."  
  
Buffy didn't make a sound, hanging on every word.  
  
"When she was brought before Bra'tac, her pouch was gone, the opening sealed as though she had never been Jaffa. Her prim'ta had been consumed within her, and yet she was as strong as the most powerful Jaffa warriors, with none of the effects of removal. It was as though something had undone all that makes one a Jaffa ... and left a warrior even more powerful." He looked at her. "She told Bra'tac that her destiny had called her, that she was meant to fight the monsters and the forces of darkness wherever she found them ... and that the darkest force she knew was the false god Apophis. She said that if she died, she would only be reborn anew."  
  
"So what did he do to her?"  
  
Teal'c's face grew stony. "He did as Apophis commanded him. But afterwards ... he began to question. To consider. To think for himself. And he taught that way of thinking to others." He smiled grimly. "To me."  
  
Buffy closed her eyes. "I had a dream the night before last. After Kheper first attacked ... I saw a rebellion. I saw ... Egypt. The pyramids. And I think I saw a Slayer fighting the Sun God."  
  
"Ra," Teal'c whispered. "The Supreme System Lord." His voice deepened even more. "False god," he spat.  
  
"Dead false god," Buffy mused.  
  
Teal'c's eyes widened. "You know?"  
  
Buffy shrugged. "The dreams work like that. They don't always make sense, but somehow they're important." She sighed and started rummaging through a cabinet. "Sometimes I just wish I could get the Cliffs Notes on the whole prophetic dream thing, y'know?" She held up a mug. "You want coffee?"  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
Sam Carter was falling. Tumbling, windmilling through a crack in reality, seeing flashes of her past ... of the experiences of a creature she had never chosen to know ... fears for the future, glimpses of what might have been ... stars whipping past, faster, faster, faster--  
  
Her eyes snapped open just in time to realize that she wasn't just dreaming about falling -- she saw Jack O'Neill's face right in front of hers an instant before she landed on him. Hard.  
  
Jack woke up with an explosive cough, whipping around and sitting bolt upright; the sudden movement threw Sam to the floor, and it was a moment before she was awake enough to scramble upright.  
  
Riley was right there, Beretta in hand, looking for threats. Teal'c and Buffy came rushing in from the kitchen, looking for threats; before anyone had time to react, Willow and Tara were clattering down the stairs, followed closely by Joyce.  
  
"What happened?" Willow asked urgently.  
  
"I must've rolled off the couch." Sam smiled helplessly. "Sorry, sir."  
  
"Ooph. Apology accepted. And is that ... coffee I smell?"  
  
Buffy went back into the kitchen and came back with a steaming mug, handing it to O'Neill. He took one sip and sighed contentedly. "Ma'am ... you are a goddess."  
  
Sam couldn't help but smile again. If you took away the house and the couch and the TV, and ignored the fact that this was California, then she could imagine this happening in any one of a hundred worlds they'd visited over the years. The easy camraderie, the jokes ... the closeness that was second nature to an exploration team.  
  
Closeness, Sam mused. When you trusted your life to people, day in, day out, for years, you had to get close ... but you couldn't get too close, couldn't cross the line beyond which the closeness began to affect your judgment.  
  
She looked at Jack -- *the Colonel, dammit, he's the Colonel* -- and wondered how the hell she'd managed to cross that line without even realizing it. How *they* had managed to cross the line.  
  
She accepted a cup of coffee and an English muffin, sipped listlessly at the mug and chewed on the food without tasting it, and tried to get her mind back to the business at hand.  
  
"You look kinda lost," someone said behind her. She looked back to see Willow, the redhead.  
  
"It's just ... strange circumstances."  
  
"I know the feeling," Willow said.  
  
Sam frowned. "I don't see how you can. I mean, yesterday morning, if you'd told me vampires were real, I would have laughed in your face. And now..."  
  
"...it's like the world should be a lot different. Like people shouldn't be worried about the things that worry them. Like whether there's milk for the coffee, like what you want to do for lunch, like will that cute guy you've known forever ever realize the way you feel about him."  
  
Sam's jaw dropped. "You know an awful lot about me."  
  
"I was talking about me," Willow shot back with a disarming smile. "One night a vampire picked me up at the Bronze and tried to kill me. After that ... it was either go into denial or try and fight back." She shrugged. "I'm not much good at denial. And I can't turn my back."  
  
"Can't be safe."  
  
Willow laughed theatrically. "I laugh at danger." Then the shy smile returned. "Of course, I try and make sure danger can't hear me when I'm laughing at it." She cleared her throat. "So ... you think those electrical thingies will work to break the bad guy's spell?"  
  
"The zat guns? They've worked before. Kinda dangerous, though."  
  
"I heard," Willow said. "Buffy took two shots and didn't wake up for half a day, they told me."  
  
Carter blinked. *Two* shots? She looked at the tiny blonde girl in the kitchen. "Two shots from a zat gun kill," she said absently.  
  
Willow blinked. "Wow. I mean I knew Buffy was strong, but ... good thing they didn't hit her a third time."  
  
"I'll say. The third shot would have disintegrated her," Sam said with a shudder.  
  
Willow frowned a moment, then brightened. "Ooh. Electron bond disruption, right?"  
  
Sam whipped her head around. "*What*?"  
  
"The thing doesn't just zap you with electricity, it disrupts electron bonds in the target's molecular structure," Willow chirped. "So the first time you get hit, you get a lot of electrons breaking away and zinging around your body, and it's like an electric shock. The second time, with the body already energized, you probably get an exponentially worse shock, plus some molecular breakdown, which is really bad for your health ... and then with the third shot, the molecular bonds get so badly destabilized that you kind of get torn down to the elements." She shrugged. "At least that's how I'd do it."  
  
Carter had to use her hand to physically close her jaw as she stared at Willow. For someone with no experience at all with Goa'uld technology to figure out the workings of the mysterious sidearm just from one or two observations and one or two comments ... "Wow."  
  
"That's our Will," Buffy cracked as she wandered over. "Bad-ass Wiccan and science geek. How'd you guys sleep?"  
  
"Quiet," Will said. "I needed it."  
  
"I'll say," Buffy responded. "Night before last, you didn't sleep, you died. Take it from me, it is not restful."  
  
"Okay ... you died?" Sam had to ask.  
  
"Just for a minute or two," Buffy said, sitting down on the couch with a coffee cup and a blueberry muffin. "Ugly master vampire wanted to open the Hellmouth back when I first moved here from L.A. I wanted to stop him. He drowned me and went on to try and take over the world; my friends found me and got me going again; when it was all over, long story short, I'm alive, he's toast, the Hellmouth's closed, cue the party music and dance the night away."  
  
"Save the world and have a party?" O'Neill asked, wandering over. "You think the General would go for that, Carter?"  
  
Sam tried to imagine General Hammond authorizing a dance party in the Stargate complex. Then she tried to imagine his reaction if the idea was even suggested to him as a joke. This time, the giggle couldn't be stopped.  
  
O'Neill's cell phone rang; he snapped it open quickly. "O'Neill. Yeah, what's up, Daniel? ... You got a date to work with? Sweet. How long have we got? ... Uh huh. Uh huh. ... Okay, Danny. Come on back; we've got some planning to do." He snapped the phone shut and stuffed it in a pocket.  
  
Sam was afraid of the news. "How much time?"  
  
"Three days and two nights. Apparently, whatever our friendly neighborhood snake-head wants to do, it's gotta happen about an hour after sunset, day after tomorrow."  
  
Carter forced herself to calm down. Two nights, three days. The end of the world was coming. Day after tomorrow. Sundown. And what could be done to stop it?  
  
Buffy smiled. She actually *smiled*. "Hey, that's a lot more warning than we usually get."  
  
end part six 


	7. Plan A

author's note:  
  
At looooooooooooooooooong last...  
  
A tribute to the power of feedback.  
  
Some of you may have noticed that this one has been stalled for a good long while; it's been a rough summer and fall, Real Life going medieval on me at times, and sometimes I thought about how to work this thing out, but could never get started. I wrote one or two snippets, but the big things kept stalling on me.  
  
Then I read a work-in-progress by Mandolin, left some feedback, and ... lo and behold, my feedback spawned feedback. Comments on writing styles, "creativity demons", and how to get a commando, an astrophysicist, and a Jaffa to walk into a bar. Mandolin had a suggestion for another way for it to work ... I gave it some thought, and all of a sudden, it began to make sense. Two weeks later, here we are.  
  
And since one must give credit where credit is due ...  
  
Amanda Ohlin, this one's for you.  
  
(Check out her stuff on ff.net; I've got her as a Favorite Author, and if you check it out, you'll see why.)  
  
---  
  
(Standard disclaimer in Part I.)  
  
---  
  
Part 7  
  
"Come on, Buffy. The only reason you don't like the plan is because you're not a part of it."  
  
"There's too many things that can go wrong, Xander. Giles, tell them."  
  
"Actually, Buffy ... if I understand it properly, this plan may have a better chance of success than anything I could come up with."  
  
Buffy spun a stake on the coffee table. "Blasting the entrances to Kheper's stronghold closed and then setting off a ... what was it again?"  
  
"FAE," Riley answered.  
  
Willow pursed her lips. "I think the proper term these days is 'alternative lifestyle', isn't it?"  
  
"Not for the bomb, it isn't," Riley shot back with a smile. "F.A.E. Fuel-air explosive. It's perfect, assuming they can get one. And assuming that they can man-handle it through the sewers into the compound."  
  
"Seems kinda chancy to me," Buffy said. "I mean, what if the bomb doesn't go off? Or what if it doesn't affect them?"  
  
"Oh, it'll affect them," Riley said. "The thing releases flammable gas and then ignites it. If the fireball doesn't fry any vampires or demons that are in there, the shockwave'll finish them off. Four to one it'll collapse the ceilings on the whole complex."  
  
"And collapse any buildings on top of it," Buffy mused darkly.  
  
"Naw," Xander said. "Look at the map. It'll just make a nice big crater in Richard Wilkins Memorial Park. Which, when you think of it, is kind of fitting."  
  
"What, that we're blowing up the park they named for the Mayor? Or that we're killing a snake the same way we killed the Mayor when *he* turned into a snake?"  
  
"Excuse me," came a voice from the front door. "Did someone say something about a mayor turning into a *snake*?"  
  
Buffy turned around and saw the owner of the voice: Jack O'Neill, dressed in civilian clothes with a baseball cap and a battered leather jacket (who would wear a leather jacket in California in August? Obviously someone who didn't belong), with Sam Carter behind him, in a black t-shirt and jeans. O'Neill had a bag of groceries in his hands.  
  
"Figured we could at least make up for all your food that we ate," O'Neill commented. "So you were saying that the mayor of this fine town turned into a snake? I mean an actual snake?"  
  
Willow shook her head. "Demon snake. And he tried to eat our high-school graduating class."  
  
O'Neill put down the grocery bag. "Hmf. Must've been a Democrat."  
  
"Was he?" Buffy mused.  
  
Willow shrugged. "Well ... he was just ... you know, the Mayor. Always had been. He'd been around forever."  
  
"Literally," Xander clarified.  
  
Carter set down a bag. "So how was he stopped?" she asked. "He obviously didn't succeed; I think something like that would have made the news."  
  
"A lot of things happen here," Xander answered. "People just ... don't notice. Make excuses. Find some way to explain away the weird. And yeah, we stopped Mayor McSnake, but it wasn't easy." He shook his head, and a dark look came over his face. "Wasn't cheap either."  
  
Teal'c entered the house with a nod. "Perhaps a similar strategy would work." He glanced at O'Neill and Carter. "In the event we are unable to implement the current strategy."  
  
Willow shook her head. "Not unless you've got a hundred graduating seniors with flaming bows and arrows, spear guns, axes, stakes, that sort of thing. And we needed explosives there too."  
  
"Some good people didn't make it out," Xander sighed. "Some not-so-good people too, but some good people."  
  
Buffy looked over. "You're thinking about Larry?"  
  
"He was getting out, Buffy. You know he had a football scholarship to USC?"  
  
"Wow."  
  
Xander shook his head. "I mean, yeah, he made my life miserable for years when we were all growing up, but when you learn what sort of secrets he's holding back, how hard it is for him to live day to day, then..." He drew a hand over his face. "He was almost out and away from here. Larry deserved better than to be crushed by a power-hungry political snake, you know what I mean?"  
  
O'Neill pursed his lips. "That's politics for you," he said darkly, without even a hint of humor. "Okay, they don't usually crush you literally, but ... it's all the same, I guess."  
  
Teal'c nodded. "I have never seen it otherwise, O'Neill." He placed a long duffel on the ground and extracted a staff weapon, looking it over with a critical eye. "Have we been successful in acquiring the necessary explosives?"  
  
"Hammond hasn't called us back," O'Neill answered. "We'll know when he knows. The good news is, the rest of the equipment is coming in to the airport on a transport: C4, remote carts, and a couple of flamethrowers, I think. Should be there in a couple of hours."  
  
Xander cleared his throat. "Why not just go to the army base and, oh, borrow some explosives?"  
  
"They haven't got anything there that's up to the job," O'Neill said. "We've got the charges for sealing the exits, we've got the cart systems to get the bombs into position, but we're still trying to find the FAE's."  
  
"How can you not know where the bombs are?" Xander asked. "I mean, you're the Air Force. Bombs are your business."  
  
"Yes, they are," O'Neill shot back. "But the type we're looking for, they're not making right now, and they're actually decommissioning them. So finding a bomb dump that's actually got a FAE we can use isn't gonna be exactly like getting a quart of milk."  
  
"What about using some of those, ah, bunker-busting thingies that you used in the Gulf War?" Willow asked. "I mean, the complex he has is just a big honkin' bunker, right?"  
  
Carter shook her head. "We don't know how deep it is, and we can't locate it precisely enough. And we couldn't guarantee a kill in any case, even if we could get authorization to drop it."  
  
"So maybe roll it in? Like you were planning to do with the fuel-air thing?"  
  
"Wouldn't work," Carter said. "The problem is, we might collapse part of the complex and leave the rest. We couldn't guarantee a total kill, and we'd never get a second chance to take him out."  
  
Teal'c sat down cross-legged. "Perhaps if the situation is as dire as Daniel Jackson and Rupert Giles have said, we should consider using an atomic weapon."  
  
Buffy dropped her glass onto the ground with a crash. Willow and Xander looked at him, jaws gaping. Giles and Riley stopped cold and stared as well. Even the Air Force people were staring at him oddly.  
  
"Absolutely *not*," O'Neill finally responded.  
  
Buffy sputtered, "You ... you'd actually *consider* that?"  
  
"As a final alternative only," Teal'c answered. "If nothing else will stop the Goa'uld Kheper, though, we must consider it."  
  
Carter looked him dead in the eye. "Teal'c, there's ten thousand people in this town!"  
  
"And there are six billion people on the planet Earth," was the response. "If this ... Hellmouth can destroy them all, then is it not our responsibility to prevent that, whatever the cost?"  
  
"Teal'c, we are *not* going to put innocents at risk just to take this guy down. For crying out loud, you know better than that!"  
  
"I know this," Teal'c said. "I very much fear, though, that Kheper knows it as well, and will use it as a weapon against us."  
  
O'Neill sighed. "Daniel, can ya talk some sense into ... okay, where's Daniel?"  
  
"Dr. Jackson fell asleep in my flat," Giles said. "He appeared exhausted; I felt it best to let him sleep now, with Kheper's forces immobilized by the sun."  
  
"Yeah, good call," O'Neill sighed. "You look like you could use a few hours as well."  
  
Giles lifted a coffee cup. "I certainly could. I suppose it'll have to wait."  
  
Buffy tapped the stake on the coffee table. "Okay, say we can't find the bomb. What about just pouring in gasoline or something, setting it all on fire, and then blowing the exits?"  
  
"Maybe if we could find a liquid-natural-gas tank truck," Riley offered.  
  
"No way to pipe that much LNG down there, and even so, it's way too volatile," Carter said.  
  
O'Neill stood. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. They can't have wiped out all the bombs this fast, and even if they have, like the man said, bombs are our business." He looked at his watch. "Today's Friday. Whatever King Snake is planning, it can't go down before Sunday night, right?" he asked, looking at Giles.  
  
"Two hours after sunset," Giles confirmed.  
  
"How big a window has he got?"  
  
Giles blinked. "Window? There aren't any windows at the Hellmouth ... not anymore, at least."  
  
O'Neill opened his mouth and then shut it. Carter broke in: "Time window. How long will he have to open the gate?"  
  
Giles pinched his nose. "Of course. Window. Silly me." He took a breath. "Generally, such rituals must be completed before sunrise; the night's energy is dissipated then." He tapped a text. "The only reason we have those two hours after sunset before the ritual can begin is because the magical energy required must ... accumulate. Build up. Once the threshold is reached, he will have essentially the rest of the night."  
  
Buffy nodded. "Okay, so we can't count on delaying him until the window passes. Which means we've got to either deny him access to the Hellmouth - and there's not enough of us to do that, unless you've got an army company you can pull out of a hat?" she asked O'Neill. At his negative shake of the head, she grimaced. "Okay, so there's today, tomorrow, and until sunset Sunday to take him out. We are *not* leaving this to the last minute again."  
  
"No," O'Neill said. "*We* are not leaving this to the last minute. I appreciate everything you kids have done to help, but there's a Goa'uld in them thar hills, and I don't see magic tricks and kung fu making a difference." He held up a hand against Buffy's protest. "Ah - ah - I know, you've got a lot of skills, and the snake-head's goons aren't like anything we've gone up against before. But ... let's face it. The last time you went face-to-face with him, he didn't leave anyone standing, did he?"  
  
Buffy opened her mouth - and this time, she was the one with nothing to say.  
  
"The last few times we-" O'Neill cocked his head to indicate Carter and Teal'c - "went up against a Goa'uld mano-a-mano, we lived and the snake didn't."  
  
"Which ones?" Buffy asked acidly.  
  
"Lessee. Ra, Hathor, Seth, ya think we can count Sokar?"  
  
Carter nodded. "I'd say so. We blew up his pla -- ah, his base, after all."  
  
*His WHAT?* Buffy wondered. Carter had almost ... almost said it. *Plant, planet, what?*  
  
It was frustrating. She'd come clean, dammit, she'd told them her big secret, and they were still holding back. Riley hadn't held back once she'd found him out, had she?  
  
*Yeah, but Riley got clearance from his boss before letting you in, didn't he?*  
  
*These guys aren't like the Initiative, remember?*  
  
The conversation went on around her, but Buffy was slowly sliding down into her own thoughts.  
  
*They're trying to shut us out. Whatever they've got planned, they're having a fit about us being involved.*  
  
*It's because he thinks you're nothing but a bunch of meddling kids,* an annoying voice broke in from the back of her head.  
  
*Well, *duh*. Why do you think we call ourselves the Scooby Gang, anyway?*  
  
*Be nice,* the voice countered. *The Colonel's kid got killed when he was ten, remember?*  
  
*Hey, I'm old enough to enlist. Xander was ready to join the Army back in the spring, remember? Way different.*  
  
*And don't be too hard on them because they're not spilling secrets,* the voice continued. *There's a law against them doing that, remember? All you've got to worry about is a bunch of tweedy stuffed shirts in England.*  
  
*But the Initiative already knew. The government already knows, remember?*  
  
Buffy tapped the stake harder and harder against the table as the argument spun in her mind, until she hit it one time too many and its point splintered.  
  
"Buff, you okay?" Xander queried.  
  
"Yeah. Just thinking. Just..." Buffy shook her head to clear out the cobwebs. "Tea - er, Tee - er - Tank. You said that these snake things live in human beings?"  
  
"The Goa'uld prefers a human host," Teal'c responded. "Humans are more easily healed and controlled."  
  
"Giles, opening the Hellmouth leads to the entire human race being wiped out, right?"  
  
Giles nodded grimly. "Once the demon armies are let loose, yes. There will be an attendant cataclysm, and nothing human will survive."  
  
Xander's eyes widened. "I get it. How do we know that wiping out the human race won't take out Walk Like an Egyptian, Talk Like an Egyptian with the rest of us?"  
  
"Maybe he's just rolling the dice," O'Neill mused.  
  
"Or he has a contingency plan," Teal'c added.  
  
"And even if he lives through it, he's still gonna be lord and master of a global disaster area, right?" Xander asked. "Won't that cut into his ability to be, well, you know, a god?"  
  
"I dunno," O'Neill said, shrugging. "Knock on wood, by the time his window opens, he'll be too busy being dead to care."  
  
A moment later, his cell phone rang; he fumbled with it a moment, then snapped it open. "O'Neill.  
  
"Yes, sir. We'll be ready. ... There's no way to get them here sonner? ... Understood, sir. We'll plan to move in at first light. ... No, sir, we shouldn't have any problem from the locals. I'm guessing the local police couldn't find Godzilla if he were sitting in the town square eating a hot dog. Cart. Hot dog cart.  
  
"Oh, *those* locals. No, I think we can keep them out of the danger zone. We got a cover story ready for the earth-shattering ka-boom? ... Gas main? Ya think?" He covered the microphone end of the phone. "You think they'll buy a cover story about a blown gas main?"  
  
"Oh yeah," Xander said. "Heck, that's almost plausible. Lots better than the usual explain-away's."  
  
O'Neill nodded. "Gas main should do it, sir. We'll report in when we're ready to move."  
  
He snapped the phone shut. "Okay, they found a couple at McGuire in New Jersey. They're going to check them out, make sure at least one is viable, fit the detonators and fly it all out here. Should arrive at Sunnydale airport at four-forty A.M."  
  
"Gives us the night to get ready," Xander said.  
  
"No, it gives *us* the night to get ready," O'Neill countered. "It gives *you* the chance to get a good night's sleep and wake up when the fireworks are all done."  
  
Carter frowned at the map. "Are you sure you can trust the guy who gave you this map?"  
  
"Not at all," Giles sighed. "He seemed sincere enough, of course, and the Bracken are not known for hostile ways, but there is no way of being certain."  
  
"Never mind the whole 'demon' thing," Xander cracked. "Because 'demon' just *screams* 'trust me', you know, in that 'I'm from Brooklyn, let me sell you a bridge' way."  
  
"I believe he said he was from the Bronx, not Brooklyn."  
  
"He wasn't being literal, Teal'c. You know, selling the Brooklyn Bridge?" O'Neill snapped. "On second thought ... never mind."  
  
"We can't get a satellite image of the cavern quickly enough," Carter mused. "And even that wouldn't reveal any real surprises."  
  
Buffy cleared her throat. "Sounds like we need to ask somebody else who was in there. Someone who has a grudge against King Tut."  
  
"Oh, no," Willow stammered. "I wasn't there long enough, and I'd probably lead you into a death-trap."  
  
"Relax, Will. I had someone else in mind."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"I still think we should have brought Teal'c."  
  
"Who would that have left to guard the house?" Carter asked.  
  
"Okay," Jack grumbled. "We've got the bases covered; I just have a bad feeling about this."  
  
Buffy led them up the alley to a converted warehouse with a simple sign above the door, announcing "BRONZE". "Here we are." She showed her ID to the bouncer at the door, got her hand stamped, and walked in. Carter and O'Neill looked the bouncer over; he stood his ground.  
  
"Ya really think I'm too young to get in here?" Jack asked acidly, gesturing to his gray hair.  
  
"I don't like the look of you," the bouncer said. "She's okay. You're not."  
  
O'Neill pulled out his Air Force ID. "Official business, son. I'm not here to cause anybody any trouble."  
  
"Please," Carter said sweetly, opening her jacket so the bouncer could see what she was wearing. Or more precisely, so he could see the bulge of the pistol at her hip. "We just have to see someone inside there, that's all."  
  
O'Neill hooked his thumbs over his belt, showing the bouncer a glimpse of his own sidearm. "It's kinda urgent."  
  
The bouncer gulped, then waved them in.  
  
They caught up to Buffy in a moment, then followed her to the bar, right to where the small man in the trenchcoat was busying himself with a beer and a basket of chicken wings.  
  
"Well, well, well. The Slayer, in the flesh. And Colonel Disaster himself. What happened, love, you finally decide to trade up from Captain Cardboard?"  
  
"Cork it, Spike. We need information."  
  
"And where is the mysterious Mister Finn, anyway? Does he know that you're out clubbing with a gentleman old enough to be your father?"  
  
Buffy gritted her teeth so hard O'Neill could hear the grinding. "For your information, William, he's watching out for Giles until the big military operation that's going to wipe out Kheper. You remember Kheper? The lame Egyptian wannabe who turned you into his bitch?"  
  
"Don't ... task me, Slayer. You want my help, the least you can do is ask nicely. And nothing says 'please' as nicely as cash."  
  
O'Neill snorted. "A vampire? Looking for cash? For what? What are ya gonna buy, sunscreen?"  
  
"For your information, soldier boy, ever since your colleagues chipped me, I've got to pay for my blood. It's either this or I take up pickpocketing."  
  
Buffy slapped down some bills on the bar. "We wouldn't want you doing anything immoral, now would we?"  
  
Spike grabbed the small pile. "You're not buying much with that."  
  
"Just look over the map we have of Kheper's complex, Spike. Tell us if there's anything missing that we'd need to know about."  
  
"Depends on what you're planning to do to it," Spike responded sarcastically. "I mean, I couldn't tell you the best place to hold a tea party or where the poof's most likely to be. How are you planning to take him?"  
  
O'Neill ran with it. "Roll in a bomb on a remote-control cart, blow the entrances with C4, and set off the bomb."  
  
"That simple?"  
  
"That simple. Bomb comes in tomorrow morning, by tomorrow night he's history."  
  
"Well, if that's all you need the map for, then yeah, it's accurate enough. About like I remember, and if there are any surprises in there, I'm not aware of them."  
  
"Okay," O'Neill said. "That's all we needed to know."  
  
"It'll never work," Spike said mockingly.  
  
"It's a simple plan," O'Neill countered. "The fewer parts of the plan, the less that can go wrong."  
  
"Too simple, too straight-forward. No plan ever survives exposure to the Hellmouth. I ought to know."  
  
"Yeah," Buffy scoffed. "I lost track of how many times you tried to kill me, and now you can't even lay a finger on me."  
  
Spike gently poked Buffy with his forefinger. "Mark my words, Slayer. It's going to go wrong, you'll see. You'll come back to me, begging for my help."  
  
"In your dreams, Spike."  
  
"Hmf," Spike snorted as he drained the last of his beer. "Oh, and your lady friend over there? Hope you're not too fond of her."  
  
O'Neill looked over to the dance floor, to the edge, where Carter was watching his back - and getting some attention from a roguish gent, dressed in a way he'd had nightmares about his son...  
  
He took a deep breath, looked back at the bar, but the bleached man was gone.  
  
At his side, Buffy frowned at the tableau. Then she turned to face O'Neill. "Dance with her."  
  
"Excuse me?" O'Neill sputtered.  
  
"You want her alive for tomorrow? Get out there and dance with her."  
  
O'Neill frowned, puzzled, but followed her lead. The band was playing something safe, anyway, a little old and bluesy.  
  
Buffy slid up to Carter and the pale young man, sweetly asking, "May I cut in?"  
  
"I'm sorry," the guy said. "We're kinda hitting it off here."  
  
"Think of this as moving up in the world," Buffy said, taking the guy's arm smoothly as O'Neill maneuvered Carter onto the dance floor.  
  
"Sir?" Carter asked, confused, as they moved awkwardly among the youths.  
  
"Something lit off the kid's spider-sense, Carter."  
  
"Something about that guy?" Carter said, laughing softly. "You know I could have handled any trouble."  
  
"I don't doubt it," O'Neill agreed. "But ... well, the only way any of this makes any sense to me is if I think like we're out on assignment."  
  
"Which we are," Carter said.  
  
"Like it was another planet," Jack whispered.  
  
Carter nodded, and just then, the music switched, going from the safe blues to the Righteous Brothers. "Unchained Melody," as if it weren't bad enough. "Somebody hates us," Jack groaned, rolling his eyes to the ceiling.  
  
"Can we get off the floor?"  
  
"Too far. Someone would notice."  
  
"So I guess we've got to dance."  
  
"I guess so," Jack muttered, putting an arm around Carter and beginning the slow dance.  
  
"Sir ... we can just think of it like P7X-935," Carter said softly into his ear.  
  
"The swamp? Add two banjos and you've got Planet Deliverance?"  
  
Carter laughed. "That was P7R-393, sir. P7X-935 was the one based on the Incas, remember? The one where there was the dance ceremony before battle?"  
  
"Oh, right. The one where we had to convince them that we couldn't..."  
  
"Right, sir." Carter chuckled as O'Neill spun her gently around, keeping an eye on the perimeter, the tables, the exits.  
  
"Carter, there's something I've been meaning to ask you for a long time," Jack finally said, as the singing crescendoed.  
  
"What is it?" she asked, looking him dead in the eyes.  
  
"How the *hell* can you keep those planet names straight?"  
  
Carter winced, then smiled. The spell was broken, thank God.  
  
Buffy turned up then. "Everything's okay," she announced. "We can get out of here now, I think."  
  
O'Neill looked hard at her. "What happened to the other guy?"  
  
"Oh, him?" Buffy asked, looking down at her outfit and brushing off dust. "Gone with the wind, I guess."  
  
"And now we've got one going out by request," the DJ announced. "Courtesy of Spike, this one's for Buffy and the Colorado Cuckoos."  
  
With that, the music shifted to a drum riff, then raucous singing: "That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snake and aeroplanes, Lenny Bruce is not afraid..."  
  
Buffy whirled, and O'Neill and Carter followed her gaze to see Spike, sliding out the side door, favoring the trio with a mocking salute.  
  
"I'm gonna kill him," Buffy growled. "One of these days I'm going to kill him."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
Daniel smiled as he pored through another ancient text from Giles' collection. For an amateur, the man had a library of books that would have shamed most of the people Daniel had ever known; there were languages in here more ancient than the Egyptians, than the Sumerians, than any race of humans that had ever walked the Earth ... but there were also priceless relics of the ancient human civilizations, books and scrolls, knick-knacks from his collection that had survived the mindless, devastating sweep of crusades. Copies, some of them, but copies of works that had been given up as lost in wrecked temples, and at least a dozen pieces that were literally hidden survivors of the lost library of Alexandria.  
  
Giles had muttered about them being necessary for his work, downplaying the absolute treasures in his possession. He picked up a papyrus that would, without a doubt, fetch forty million dollars from any one of a dozen collectors. The value of the artifacts as curiosities seemed to be lost to Giles, who cared more for the information within them.  
  
Riley Finn was looking at the books with trepidation, clearly seeing that something in these works was beyond his understanding. He wasn't dumb, not by any stretch, but he hid his intelligence much the same way Jack O'Neill did. Finn had explained that they'd been working under cover for the past year, requiring a certain level of subterfuge, and it was easier for a smart guy to play dumb than for a dumb guy to play smart.  
  
Still, he knew when he was out of his league, though Daniel was very careful not to make a point of it - Finn knew a lot about human nature, but he also knew his limitations. He would occasionally offer suggestions to Giles as the older man pored through his texts, looking for alternate methods of defeating the Goa'uld; but he would laugh off his contributions. "I know I'm just here for the muscle," he'd said, grinning infectiously.  
  
He reminded Daniel a lot of what Jack O'Neill must have been like as a young man: an intelligent man in a job where intelligence was needed, though an outsider never realized it; a man comfortable with the needs of hiding that intelligence.  
  
Giles, however, made no effort to hide the blazing intellect behind his glasses. Much like himself, Daniel supposed, Giles had never been truly comfortable with the power of his mind, and had tried for a long time without success to make himself into something he wasn't; though there were other things about Rupert Giles, certainly.  
  
Daniel looked around the apartment, grimacing at the umbrella rack which held several swords and a couple of axes, and at the crossbow hanging over the mantel.  
  
Then his eyes whirled to the door at the sound of a loud *thump*. He and Giles and Riley traded startled looks, and then all three shot into motion.  
  
Giles took up his crossbow and quickly loaded a bolt; Riley moved to the side of the door, pistol drawn, taser in the off hand. Daniel dug in his jacket with both hands; his right came up with the zat gun and instinctively pushed the catch, and it snapped open like a cobra ready to strike. His left hand came up with the encrypted radio-phone that was standard issue for any SGC personnel operating Earthside.  
  
The door shuddered as it absorbed another impact; Giles and Riley were poised to shoot anything that got through.  
  
Daniel snapped the phone open and mashed his thumb down on speed-dial 5. The moment he saw the screen announce "Dialing: JACK", he tucked the phone under his ear and leveled the zat at the door. "Come on, Jack. Pick up the damn phone."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"Colonel! Your phone!"  
  
O'Neill barely managed to bite his tongue before saying "thank God"; he scrambled off the dance floor and dug out the flip-phone, opening it with a flourish. "Daniel, your timing is impeccable--"  
  
The voice on the other end of the line was indecipherable - or no, it wasn't so much that as that it was three, maybe four voices shouting at once, drowned out by the harsh pops of gunshots, the explosive thumps of staff-weapon blasts, and the screams of zat fire.  
  
The blood drained from O'Neill's face. "Carter! Something's wrong!" Then he shouted into the phone: "Daniel? Finn? Watcher? Anybody there?"  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
They were dragging Daniel and Giles out like two sacks of grain. Riley moaned softly, twitching as they filed out softly, leaving him behind. Should he be relieved or insulted at not being worth capturing? He didn't know, and right now, he didn't care.  
  
As the blackness swarmed over him, he heard a desparate voice over Daniel's abandoned phone. "Daniel? Finn? Watcher? Anybody there?"  
  
And dully in the background, almost mocking him, he heard the refrain:  
  
"It's the end of the world as we know it, it's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine..."  
  
end part seven  
  
(lyrics to "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" written by William Berry, Peter Buck, Michael Mills & Michael Stipe, performed by R.E.M.) 


	8. If at First

(Standard disclaimers in Part I.)  
  
  
Giles' apartment was a war zone. Furniture was upended, weapons were strewn all over, and half a dozen monsters lay bleeding into the Watcher's carpet. The academics had put up one hell of a fight, Carter noted as she waved for O'Neill to come in, pistols up and ready.  
  
But they'd lost.  
  
Riley Finn lay twitching on the ground near the smoking corpse of a particularly gruesome creature; he let out a small moan as Carter approached. "Buffy ... I'm sorry ... there were just too many of them..."  
  
"Finn, what happened?" O'Neill snapped as he came in, Buffy hot on his heels.  
  
"They blew down the door ... we let 'em have it ... too many of them, we couldn't hold them back..." He blinked, looking from Carter to a rapidly approaching Buffy. "Buffy? How come there's two of you?"  
  
Carter looked at Finn, then at the other woman. "Take it easy, Finn. You might have a concussion on top of the zat effect."  
  
"We tried ... God, I'm sorry..."  
  
"Finn, it's not your fault," O'Neill said. "You get hit by one of those things, believe me, you're not worth much. I've been there."  
  
Riley struggled to his feet, then slumped back down to his knees. Carter and Buffy helped him back upright as O'Neill grabbed a cup and filled it at Giles' sink. "Drink up. Zats take a lot out of you."  
  
After taking a sip of water, Riley shook his head. "It's like they knew exactly what they were doing here. They came, sprayed us with the electrical guns, and just grabbed them and left."  
  
"Coincidence?" Carter mused.  
  
Riley shook his head. "I think I know what they were looking for. Look, if I told you I was looking for a guy with glasses who looked like an academic, who do you think of right away?"  
  
"Giles," Buffy responded without thinking, at the exact same moment Carter and O'Neill answered "Daniel."  
  
"They came after Willow," Riley said, clambering unsteadily to his feet. "They came after Willow for her magic, and when she got away, I think they wanted Giles. Only..."  
  
"Only they couldn't tell one geek from another," O'Neill finished.   
  
"Buffy, they know us ... they know you guys," Riley said. "They knew Willow was a witch. And they knew Giles was the man with the knowledge. How could they know that? I mean, who knows about that outside your Scoobies?"  
  
"Spike," Buffy spat.  
  
"The guy we met in the bar?" Carter asked dubiously.  
  
"The guy in the bar," Buffy confirmed. "Who ... escaped Kheper the same time Willow did. So much for that idea."  
  
"There's somebody else," O'Neill growled. "Someone who's feeding the bad guys information on the good guys. You got any usual suspects for that?"  
  
"Spike," Buffy said sourly. "Beyond that, I have no idea." She shook her head. "I need a new list of usual suspects. You think you can find something like that on the Internet?"  
  
Riley shook his head. "I'm thinking we may need to find a new Plan B on the Internet."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"Okay, blowing up the stronghold is definitely out," Buffy said to the group gathered around the Summers' dining table.  
  
"Not necessarily," O'Neill countered.  
  
"Excuse me," Xander snapped. "Did you just kinda forget that Kheper's got Giles? Plus your own resident egghead?"  
  
"No," O'Neill said acidly. "Obviously, we get them out first. *Then* we blow up the compound."  
  
"Right," Xander snapped. "Because we did so well on our home ground the last few times. I'm sure we'll be able to walk right into his home turf and rescue our guys. Only problem is, we're all gonna get killed in the process!"  
  
"Not if we play this smart!" O'Neill shot back. "Okay, let's all take a deep breath and look at what we can and can't do."  
  
"Okay," Willow said tentatively. "So what do we know about Kheper? I mean, really know?"  
  
"He was exiled by the Sys - the gods," Teal'c intoned. "By Ra. He undoubtedly harbors great resentment for the Sun God."  
  
"What about Apophis?" Willow asked. "I mean, I read the mythology, and Ra and Apophis weren't quite friendly. Was the truth anything like that?"  
  
Teal'c steepled his fingers. "Apophis was Ra's chief rival for power. He despised being ... subordinate to another."  
  
Willow smiled. "So I guess we can use that, huh?"  
  
"I don't get it, Will," Buffy mused. Willow didn't answer, simply looking intently at Teal'c.  
  
At Teal'c's forehead.  
  
Teal'c slowly removed the wool cap from his head, exposing the gilded brand on his forehead. "It appears we have a weapon," he said, with the barest hint of a smile.  
  
Xander broke into a sly smile. "I've got a weird feeling in my gut."  
  
Anya looked over. "I told you not to eat that sandwich so fast."  
  
"No, this isn't the sub ... although now you mention it, thanks, Anya ... no, this feels like a plan."  
  
Buffy cocked her head. "Do we know what to do with one of those?"  
  
Xander shook his head. "I'm not saying it's a good plan. But ... if we can get King Tut to tell us where they've got Giles and your guy, then maybe we can sneak in, get them out, and leave a little toy surprise behind. I mean, the big guy here is pretty much a messenger from Elvis, right?"  
  
"Why stop there?" Anya asked. "Why not have someone impersonate the snake guy? I mean, Kheper hasn't seen him in five thousand years, how likely is it that someone would remain the same for that long?"  
  
"Anya, that's ... that might actually work," Buffy said, with an impressed tone in her voice.  
  
"No, it wouldn't," Carter immediately countered.  
  
"Oh, sure," Anya said bitterly. "You can talk about your crazy ideas all you want, but when I actually contribute something, you just shoot it down, dismiss it out of hand-"  
  
"Why wouldn't it work?" Tara asked.  
  
"The Goa'uld ... they can sense the presence of one of their own. Or detect the absence. I ... I got taken by one, once. And they leave ... a trace," she said, shuddering.  
  
Willow blinked. "So that's why you seemed to be able to do that Force-type thingy when you first saw us?"  
  
"Yeah, there's ... something. I couldn't begin to describe it."  
  
Willow looked over at Tara, then back at Carter. "You don't need to put it into words. Just try and remember what it feels like, okay?"  
  
Carter frowned. "Sorry?"  
  
"Just ... think about the trace you felt. What it feels like to be around one of those things ... you've been around them, I take it?"  
  
Carter nodded, then closed her eyes, shivering slightly.  
  
Willow closed her eyes in turn, her hand blindly reaching out for Tara's, muttered for a moment, and then nodded. "Okay. Tara, you want to give it a try?"  
  
O'Neill shook his head. "I think we need another shopping list," he said, grabbing a piece of paper and beginning to scribble as Willow and Tara wandered up the stairs.  
  
Buffy massaged her temples. "So we're actually doing this. We're going in."  
  
Carter nodded. "Two teams, sir?"  
  
"Yeah. One in the front door, draw the snake out, and the other going in one of the back ways, grab the hostages, plant the bomb, and get out," O'Neill said. "We'll need armor," he mused, scribbling some more on the list.  
  
"We will also require something to attract the attention of the Goa'uld," Teal'c said.  
  
"Like what?" Buffy asked. "Flowers, pizza, freshly cut minions? What do brain-sucking Egyptian demon snakes go for?"  
  
"Shol'va," Teal'c responded.  
  
"Gezundheit."  
  
"To be presented with the person of a traitor ... as a gift ... is an honor to a Goa'uld. Your pale companion would serve that purpose well."  
  
Buffy blinked. "Spike? You want us to use Spike as bait?" She put her hand over her mouth, stifled a chuckle, then apparently thought better of it and broke into laughter.  
  
"What?" O'Neill asked sharply.  
  
"Spike. As bait. It's perfect. It's beautiful."  
  
They were distracted by steps on the staircase. "We've got it," Tara announced triumphantly, an arm around Willow's waist.  
  
Willow smiled, a reminder of happy times. "So what do you think?" she asked - but it wasn't her voice; it was too deep, too resonant.  
  
Then her eyes flared white.  
  
end part eight 


	9. Contingency Planning

People possessed by ancient evil Egyptian brain-sucking demon snakes do not *squeak* in fear. Willow didn't have a chance to reflect on it right at the moment, but that was the only thing that saved her from being shot dead for the second time in three days.  
  
That, or possibly Tara's quick thinking in stepping between Willow and the boom-sticks and machine guns that had suddenly snapped up and pointed at her.  
  
"Wait-wait-wait!" Tara shouted. "Don't shoot, don't shoot!"  
  
"Out of the way, kid!" O'Neill shouted.  
  
"But it's - it's - it's just a spell!" Tara persisted, stepping towards the commandos.  
  
"It's a glamour," Willow confirmed. Carter and the big guy frowned, stared at her, and then gaped. "It's just an illusion," she continued. "Showing the mind something it expects."  
  
"A disguise?" O'Neill asked incredulously.  
  
"Yuh-huh," Willow answered, only it came out more of a question.  
  
Teal'c apparently wasn't buying it; he kept his staff leveled, stepped forward, and spoke in a language Willow had never heard before, words threatening to peel the paint off the walls. She shrugged. "Happy Thanksgiving to you too?"  
  
Then Teal'c relaxed. "She is not a Goa'uld."  
  
"How did you know?" Carter asked.  
  
"What did you *say*?" Xander asked.  
  
"I said that she had regressed from her ancestors in the ancient swamps, that she was unfit to be worshipped by molds and mushrooms, and that the queen that spawned her was so stupid as to have taken a dog as a host."  
  
"Ooh. Nasty," O'Neill cracked.  
  
"A Goa'uld would have understood every word ... and would have been outraged at the insult."  
  
Willow took a breath, letting the glamour fade, and then sighed audibly. "You think it would fool Kheper?"  
  
"Without a doubt," Teal'c said.  
  
Buffy walked up to Willow with an odd look in her eyes. "Will, don't take this the wrong way, because I love you to pieces, but," she said, and then smacked Willow across the scalp with the flat of her palm. "Are you *nuts*? How about a little warning next time?"  
  
"Sorry," Willow said sheepishly. "Guess I just ... kinda got caught up in the moment."  
  
"Okay," Buffy said. "I'll let it slide. This time. Call it delayed trauma from coming back from the dead. But next time, let us know ahead of time, okay?"  
  
Xander smiled from the table. "Okay, so we've got ourselves a snake disguise. Will, feel like dressing up in that slinky outfit again?" At Tara's glare, he spread his hands. "Kidding!"  
  
"It can't be Willow," Buffy said. "The snake already knows her, and he wouldn't buy the disguise." She looked over. "Can you do the illusion, Tara?"  
  
"I ... ah ... I can do the glamour, but..."  
  
"Apophis would not take a female host," Teal'c stated.  
  
"Oh, really, Teal'c?" O'Neill challenged. "Would it even matter to a snake?"  
  
Teal'c simply stood there. "Apophis enjoys the pleasures of the flesh. He would not take a female as host unless it were absolutely necessary, and then he would abandon her for a male host at the first opportunity. I know the workings of his mind."  
  
Xander piped up. "So if it can't be Willow and they wouldn't buy Tara, then who's up third?"  
  
Buffy looked at Xander. Then Tara looked at Xander. Willow gave him a thoughtful look of her own.  
  
Xander gulped. "What's everyone looking at me like that for?"  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"Buffy, you realize this is insane, right?" Xander pleaded as he tried to keep up with the Slayer. "I mean, how could I possibly pretend to be a god? Plus me and magic, not so much with the good mix, remember?"  
  
"It'll work," Buffy said, walking so fast that Xander and Teal'c had to race to catch up. "Tara's as good at the magic as Willow is, and she'll be right there alongside you."  
  
"Valentine's Day," Xander shot back. "Remember how well *that* spell turned out? Or did you *like* spending an afternoon as a rat?"  
  
"You won't be doing the spell, Xander. Relax."  
  
"And what if he tells me in snake language that my mom was a frog?" Xander retorted. "Not that it's that far from the truth, I'll grant you, but I don't know how to say 'same to you' in snakelish!"  
  
Teal'c placed a hand on Xander's shoulder. "I will also be at your side, Xander Harris. If the Goa'uld attempts to trick you, I will guide your responses."  
  
Xander stopped a moment, and Buffy had to stop and turn around. "How ya gonna do that? You guys have some sort of fancy mind control powers? Weird technology?"  
  
"I propose to use a radio."  
  
Xander pondered. "Oh."  
  
Buffy jerked her head. "Come on." She strode on to the graveyard. "I just hope we're not wasting our time here."  
  
"Threatening Spike is never a waste of time," Xander quipped. "We don't do it nearly enough."  
  
"Do you not trust your companion?" the big guy asked.  
  
"Spike?" Xander laughed. "Please. He's tried to kill all of us more times than I can count, he loves to play mind games, he's directly responsible for me breaking up with my totally hot high-school girlfriend, he tried to sell us all out to the evil-of-the-month this spring, and he got Buffalo wing sauce all over my couch. Plus, hello, vampire? What's not to trust?"  
  
Teal'c blinked.  
  
Buffy sighed. "You and Cordelia? Xander, he may have been doing you a favor."  
  
"Yeah, but he also busted up Will and Oz. You can't tell me there was any good there."  
  
"They got back together, didn't they?"  
  
"Yeah, only to break up again last fall."  
  
"That wasn't Spike's fault and you know it."  
  
"Why are you defending him?"  
  
"I'm not defending him. He's done enough evil that we don't have to blame him for stuff that was other people's fault."  
  
Teal'c cleared his throat. "If this Spike is so untrustworthy, then perhaps we should reconsider enlisting his aid."  
  
"Naw, he'll be good," Buffy said as she approached a crypt. "He knows I'll kill him if he gets funny. Plus which, Kheper turned him into a puppet. No way Spike's gonna let that slide."  
  
She pushed open the door and stalked in, Xander and Teal'c flanking her. The crypt's occupant was sitting in a camp chair by a coffin, reading a novel and smoking a cigarette. "Well, well, well. The Slayer and entourage. Don't tell me, let me guess. Things didn't go as well as you planned?"  
  
Teal'c answered: "The forces of the Goa'uld Kheper struck tonight. They have taken the Watcher and Daniel Jackson."  
  
"And now you come crawling to me for help. I wonder why I didn't see this coming. No, wait; I *did* see this coming."  
  
Buffy blew out her breath in frustration. "Spike, it's the end of the world if you don't help. You *want* this jerk to win?"  
  
"What I *want* is this sodding chip out of my head, free reign over the denizens of this benighted township, and you cold in your grave, Slayer. Lacking that, I will *settle* for hearing you say, in front of this large and unimpeachable witness, that you were wrong, I was right, and you are now begging me for my assistance."  
  
"We don't have time for this, Spike."  
  
"Say it, Slayer. Costs you naught but your pride. Or is your ego that important?"  
  
"Spike..."  
  
"You were wrong, I was right, and you are begging for my help."  
  
Buffy sighed. "I was wrong, Spike. You were right. And we need your help."  
  
"I don't hear begging," Spike lilted.  
  
"Shall I remove his head now, Tarith'na?" Teal'c asked. "Or would you prefer I began with his arms?"  
  
"Come to think of it, who needs begging?" Spike continued smoothly. "Now, then. How can I help save the world?"  
  
"We're going into the compound," Buffy said. "Two teams. The front way, Xander's going in dressed up as a major-league snake, with Tank and the Colonel backing him up."  
  
"Please. Even I couldn't mistake Harris here for someone with power," Spike scoffed.  
  
"Tara's going to back him up. She's got a spell that can make him fool anyone. Meanwhile, the back way, the rest of us are going to go in, find Giles and Jackson, get them out, leave a bomb, and then everyone runs for it, blows the entrances behind them, and kaboom. No more snake, no more threat. You get the last laugh on King Tut, and everyone's happy."  
  
Spike dragged on his cigarette. "Can't help but notice you glossed over my part in this plan."  
  
"To attract the attention of Kheper, Xander Harris is going to present him with a gift," Teal'c announced.  
  
"I recommend chocolates. Those truffle things are quite nice."  
  
"He will be presented with the person of a traitor. A shol'va," Teal'c said, staring right at Spike.  
  
Spike blinked at that, and the cigarette dropped from his mouth.  
  
"He will accept without question, and we will be able to use this to assist in the rescue of our comrades and destroy the false god."  
  
"You're cracked."  
  
"Spike, we need you for this."  
  
"No, no, and no. If you want me for chaos and senseless violence, I'm all for it. Not this. You want bait, you pay cash. Up front, small bills." He pointed a finger right at Xander. "And before you even say it, no, I will *not* take American Express."  
  
"You mean the look on King Tut's face won't be worth it when we blow his plan up in his face?" Buffy asked, pouring on the sweetness.  
  
Spike shook his head. "Be a sight to see, right enough, but a bloke has certain needs that need a certain coin."  
  
Xander sighed, looked from Buffy to Teal'c. "I guess we gotta scrape up some cash. How much do you have on you?"  
  
Buffy rummaged through her pockets. "Ten bucks and a little change."  
  
"I got ... lessee. Seventy-five cents, a coupla buttons, and - ooh! Game token. I wondered where that went." He looked up at Teal'c. "How about you, Tank? You got any money on you?"  
  
Teal'c just looked at him.  
  
Buffy sighed. "Back to the house."  
  
Spike got to his feet. "I hope there's cocoa."  
  
"Don't push your luck, William."  
  
"I'll give you a discount if there's hot cocoa."  
  
"Spike..."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"Two-twenty, two-forty, two-fifty," O'Neill said, counting out the last of the bills. "You screw with us, I want a refund."  
  
Spike snorted.  
  
"Like Shylock."  
  
"You wouldn't," Spike countered.  
  
"Try me."  
  
Buffy tuned out the conversation and went to tidy up the coffee table. She absently noted Major Carter coming down the stairs with a stack of papers. "Everything OK there?"  
  
"Oh, sure. Your mom let me use her fax machine." She turned to O'Neill. "Siler says it went through okay. They'll try and requisition a plane to get the stuff out here at first light. With luck, it should arrive a little after the bomb."  
  
"Good," O'Neill said. "So basically that's all we can do for tonight. Get some sleep; I'll take first watch."  
  
"Yes, sir," Carter answered, turning to unpack a sleeping bag; her foot hit a box by the coffee table. "Buffy," she read on its lid. "Ma'am, I think this might be yours," she said, handing it to Buffy.  
  
It was long and fairly heavy, with the word "Buffy" in block writing. Buffy opened it and blinked. Hard.  
  
Inside the box she found a bow - a classic bow-and-arrow set, wooden, looking as though they'd been hand-made. She picked up the bow, fingered its loose string, and then picked up one of the two dozen arrows that accompanied it. Wood, sharpened, wonderfully balanced.  
  
She noticed a small paper tag tied to the bow; she pulled it off and read the simple note: "You might need this. Love, Mom."  
  
"It's beautiful," Carter said.  
  
"Yeah," Buffy breathed. "It's ... I wouldn't have guessed Mom would do this."  
  
O'Neill looked at the bow and whistled. "That's pretty good work."  
  
"May I?" Carter asked. Buffy handed her the bow; Carter strung it with some difficulty, then drew it, felt its weight, and handed it back. "Pretty strong pull there."  
  
Buffy smiled. "I can handle it. Wouldn't have thought Mom would get me something like this."  
  
Spike looked over. "You don't give your mum enough credit. That's one hell of a lady there."  
  
"Spike, what are you still doing here?"  
  
"I was just-"  
  
Buffy picked up an arrow and idly spun it in her fingers, not exactly pointed at Spike, but not quite pointed away from him, either.  
  
"-leaving, I suppose."  
  
"Tomorrow at sundown, Spike. Your crypt. Be there," Buffy emphasized.  
  
Carter patted Buffy's shoulder. "You should get some sleep."  
  
"Heh. Not too likely."  
  
"Riley's upstairs," Carter said. "You might want to check on him; he's had a really hard day."  
  
Buffy sighed, then smiled. "Thanks, Major." She grinned. "You're all right, you know that?"  
  
Carter shook her head, smiling herself. "We all do what we can. We'll wake you once we've got the bomb secured tomorrow morning."  
  
"Yes, ma'am," Buffy said, snapping off an untidy salute. She made her way up the stairs, opened the door to her bedroom, then paused. She turned around, knocked on her mother's door.  
  
"Mom?" she whispered.  
  
"Come in, Buffy."  
  
Buffy stepped into her mother's room; Joyce wasn't asleep, but reading a book while leaning against her headboard. "I found the bow."  
  
"I thought something like that might come in handy. Took a long time to explain to the man at the sporting goods store that I wanted wood." She laughed. "I finally told him that my daughter was a traditionalist, and incredibly strong besides. He kept insisting on composite arrows."  
  
"Maybe against the tougher demons," Buffy said, laughing in turn. "Not against vampires."  
  
"I got a dozen composites just to shut him up."  
  
"So you cleaned him out of wood arrows?"  
  
Joyce nodded.  
  
"Mom, I ... I know you'd love it if I didn't have to do this, if I didn't even know which end of an arrow was-"  
  
"Buffy, stop." Joyce looked at her. "You are what you are. You couldn't avoid it any more than I can avoid gray hairs."  
  
"You know, they make dyes for that now?"  
  
Joyce laughed and softly threw a pillow at her daughter. "You know what I mean. It's ... I get it. I can't teach you anything about it, I can't be at your side for any of it, but ... I wanted to do something for my daughter. The hero."  
  
"Mom..."  
  
"I believe in you, you know. You're going to win. You'll rescue Giles, stop this monster, and it'll all be okay."  
  
"I..." Buffy sighed. "I wish I could believe it."  
  
Joyce raised a stern finger. "I forbid you to believe anything else."  
  
"Mom!"  
  
"Come here," Joyce said, beckoning. Buffy stepped closer, and Joyce hugged her. "I love you, and I believe in you. Now go get some sleep. It's well after midnight."  
  
"I love you too, Mom. Sleep well."  
  
She closed her mother's door and crawled into her own bed, next to Riley. The commando was sleeping soundly, breathing softly with a cadence that might have been a snore if it weren't so quiet.  
  
Sleep didn't come that easily to the Slayer.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
It had taken a while to make sure the house was asleep; Jack felt guilty about leaving the door unlatched, but there was no other way for him to get back in.  
  
He'd questioned Riley Finn closely about the precise location of the Hellmouth, drawing a map of his own while Teal'c was accompanying the others to find their bait. Now, in the dead of night, Jack relied on a set of night-vision goggles and an infrared flashlight to pick his way through the ruins of the old Sunnydale high school. Past forlorn rows of lockers, hanging open and empty where once they had held books, contraband, and the occasional protesting student; past a burned-out principal's office where, undoubtedly, his gracious hosts in this town had spent some quality time; and on to the splintered and scarred doors that marked the entrance to the school library.  
  
The crack in the ground would have been invisible to normal eyes in this light; with the goggles and the dark light, it showed up crystal-clear. Jack perched himself near a collapsed stack of books and brought out one more gadget, removing the goggles, letting his eyes adjust to the dark.  
  
Not for the first time, he thought, he'd been wrong and Teal'c had been right. If they failed tomorrow ... they'd need to lessen the worst-case scenario. He squinted at the backlighted screen of the device, copying its readings onto a scratch pad.  
  
Then he blinked, dazzled, as a bright light washed over the scene; blindly, he dropped device, pen, and paper, bringing up his MP-5 and snapping on its own spotlight...  
  
...pointing it right into the face of Buffy Summers, who stood on the upper level of the library. She quickly brought up a crossbow, then lowered it fractionally as an expression of shock crossed her face.  
  
"You snuck out," she said accusingly.  
  
"I had things to do," he countered.  
  
"Like what? I thought the plan was to kill him so we wouldn't have to worry about the Hellmouth."  
  
"If we're lucky," Jack countered. "If we're very lucky. If not ... Teal'c was right. We need a contingency plan."  
  
"So what's the toy you've got there?" she asked, indicating the fallen device with her crossbow.  
  
"GPS tracker." He picked it up, along with the notepad. "Needed to get a precise location fix."  
  
"It's not exactly a secret where the high school is," Buffy countered.  
  
"Yeah, but in a ruin like this, it's tough to zero in on a precise spot on the floor plan."  
  
Buffy snorted. "What can you do with that, anyway? If there was a way to close the Hellmouth, believe me, Giles would know about it."  
  
"What I can do," Jack responded, "is have a bomber ready to drop its payload right *there*." He pointed to the crack in the ground. "With the GPS coordinates, they can drop from twenty thousand feet and hit within a yard."  
  
"Great," Buffy shot back. "So your plan is to bounce the rubble, maybe widen the crack some. Great thinking."  
  
"I'm not planning on there being any rubble left," Jack countered. "If worst comes to worst, I'm doing this so there won't even be a crack in the ground for the bad guys to open. And God forbid it comes to that, no chance for *anything* to approach. For years to come." He looked at her significantly, and her eyes went wide.  
  
"You're not talking about just a bomb, are you?" she whispered. "You're talking about The Bomb. Capital B."  
  
"Like I said, we need to prepare for the worst."  
  
"How much worse can it get than nuking Sunnydale?"  
  
Jack stepped right into the beam of Buffy's light. "Weren't you just saying that if he opens this thing, it's the end of the world? My superiors can stage an evacuation, find half a dozen excuses for it; they'll have all day to get the town clear. By sundown, there won't be anybody left except the monsters, and the point is to *deny* them this Hellmouth of yours, isn't it?"  
  
"And you think that this will work? A damned atom bomb?"  
  
"Variable-yield tactical device. Set for minimum yield, burst at about ten or twenty meters - they'll figure it out for themselves. It should fuse the rock, melt this crack closed."  
  
"And if not? If the Hellmouth's still open and King Tut can crack it open with no opposition?"  
  
Jack shook his head. "That's why bombers don't just carry one bomb."  
  
"Overkill much?"  
  
Jack finally stepped right up to her. "Screw the secrets. Listen, kid; this is bigger than the end of the world, okay? If we don't stop this guy, one way or the other, it's the end of the world *and it doesn't stop there*. Remember the Doorway to Heaven? The Gate?"  
  
"Uh-huh," Buffy whispered.  
  
"Well, he's going to bring about the Apocalypse and then take it out through the Gate."  
  
"The Gate you control, right? I mean, you've got to have control of the Gate, otherwise you wouldn't know anything about any of this, right?"  
  
"That's right."  
  
"And he can't find it, right? I mean you've got it like out in the desert or buried under a mountain or something, probably have a self-destruct wired into it?"  
  
Jack sighed in frustration. "Something like that. But you know what's *really* sweet? There's another Gate. Out in Siberia where we've got no control. He takes it, it isn't just Hell on Earth to worry about. There's other places, other worlds. Places that depend on us holding back the tide. Places that, if we fail here, are gonna be destroyed to the last. Now do you get an idea of what's at stake?"  
  
Buffy nodded slowly. "Yeah, I'd call that pressure."  
  
"Good. Come on, kid. Get home. Get some sleep while you can."  
  
"Sleep? With all this on my mind?"  
  
"You want to sleep tonight, or maybe die tomorrow night?"  
  
"Hello, atom bomb?" she shot back, but was slowly backing away from the crack in the floor.  
  
"No pressure. Just remember, it could be worse. And if we do our jobs right, no bomb at all."  
  
"Shyeah. If things go right. Like that's ever happened before..."  
  
end part nine 


	10. Forward, the Light Brigade

(Standard disclaimers in Part I.)  
  
---  
  
"Ladies and gentlemen," Xander Harris announced, "I present you with the world's most expensive barbecue grill. Self-propelled, capable of cooking your burgers and mixed grill to perfection, or giving evil overlord wannabes that nicely-charred texture, with just a hint of mesquite flavor."  
  
"Get away from that. It's a bomb, not a toy."  
  
Xander sighed as he looked askance at the Colonel. "Duh. I'll have you know that I'm only mostly stupid."  
  
Buffy came down from her room and squinted, rubbing the grit out of her eyes. "So that's it, huh?"  
  
"It" was an oblong box-like cart with six wheels, with a set of pressure tanks strapped to its top in a slightly makeshift fashion, capped with valves, wired into an electronic box with an antenna on it.  
  
"That's it," O'Neill confirmed. "Not fueled yet; we've got the stuff out in the Humvee. We won't pump up the tanks until game time."  
  
"Oh, good," Buffy mused. "Wouldn't want to bring a live bomb into the house."  
  
Carter looked the device over. "There are safeties on the valves and the detonators. And without the gas in the tanks, the detonators aren't any more powerful than a couple of firecrackers."  
  
"Still, firecrackers in the house ... not exactly making with the comfort," Buffy responded. She looked towards the kitchen. "Mom awake yet?"  
  
Xander nodded. "She woke up about the time the Dawn Patrol came in." He cocked his head towards the kitchen.  
  
"Thanks." Buffy wandered through the living room to the kitchen. "Mom? Can we talk a minute?"  
  
"What's up, pumpkin?"  
  
Buffy took a breath. "Mom, I need to know you're going to be safe."  
  
Joyce closed her eyes a moment. "Buffy, I've seen what your life is like. There's no such thing as safe; all I can do is help the best I can."  
  
"Mom ... this is going to be bad."  
  
"It's always bad."  
  
"This is gonna be worse," Buffy insisted. "Look, this clown already attacked the house once, and he got Giles at home. There's no guarantee he won't come back here again."  
  
Joyce nodded. "I could probably set up in the gallery and wait until it's over."  
  
Buffy clenched her eyes shut, gripped the center island's countertop so hard the wood creaked, and sighed. "It's worse than that, Mom. The *town* isn't safe."  
  
Joyce laughed. "Weren't you the one who taught me that?"  
  
"Mom, I'm serious," Buffy said. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "If we can't stop this thing tonight, then the military people are planning extreme measures. Matter of fact, the best place for you to be might be Los Angeles."  
  
Joyce's eyes widened. "How bad are we talking?"  
  
Buffy took a breath. "If we don't get out alive, Plan B is, they're going to try and nuke the Hellmouth," she hissed.  
  
Joyce dropped a fork with a clatter.  
  
"Look, it won't happen unless the Big Bad beats us, anyway, and it wouldn't happen until sometime tomorrow." Buffy reached up and put a hand on Joyce's shoulder. "You've got all day."  
  
Joyce sighed and looked around the kitchen. "What time?"  
  
"'Scuse me?"  
  
"What time tomorrow are they going to do this?"  
  
Buffy frowned. "I don't know. Might be a good thing to find out, huh?"  
  
"Might be," Joyce said pointedly.  
  
Buffy sighed and made her way back out to the living room, where Carter was slowly rolling the bomb on the floor using a remote-control device. "Uh, Colonel? Got a question."  
  
O'Neill looked up. "Shoot."  
  
"Kinda ... private thing? You know, what we were talking about last night?" She cringed even as she said it, but Riley was still asleep, his body trying to recover from the abuse it had taken during the night.  
  
They'd all need their energy tonight.  
  
O'Neill sauntered over. "What is it?" he whispered.  
  
"It's about what you're planning to do to the Hellmouth in case this doesn't work."  
  
"Look, kid, we've been through this. There's not really much choice."  
  
"I know," Buffy whispered. "I just wanted to know, what time were you planning on having them do it?"  
  
"Two hours after sundown, like the Englishman said. That's when they'd be ready to get the ball rolling, right?"  
  
Buffy nodded. "I think so ... but these things sometimes don't go according to plan. Maybe you should set it up for a little before dusk? You know, it'd be a lot less ... noticeable at that time."  
  
O'Neill frowned. "I'll have to clear it."  
  
"You can just do that?" Buffy asked. "I mean, don't you need authorization from the President or something like that? Keys, or codes, or something like that?"  
  
"Something like that," O'Neill said. "Sometimes all we can do is tell our bosses what's got to be done; it's up to them whether they actually do it or not." He brought out his mobile radio/phone and snapped it open. "Might as well be sure," he said, thumbing a button. "O'Neill for Hammond.  
  
"Yes, sir, the device came. We're getting it ready now. Looking at go-mission approximately twenty-hundred hours local. No, sir, we haven't gotten the other package yet. Uh, sir? We may need to move up time-zero on the contingency to about nineteen-hundred hours local tomorrow. That should still leave enough time to evac-  
  
"They didn't? ... He didn't?" O'Neill was hissing through his teeth as well by now. "Sir, did you happen to mention the little thing about the end of the world? ... Yes, sir, I know that's all part of the job ... sir, the last government agency to take charge here was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the NID. Do you want the fate of the human race in that office?  
  
"I know you know that, sir. Did you tell *him* that? ... Well, maybe you could tell him again? Yeah, calling him now might not be a bad idea."  
  
Buffy closed her eyes and banged her head against the wall.  
  
O'Neill gave her a sympathetic look and then turned back to the phone. "Yes, sir, I'm here. ... Thank you, sir; I'm doing well. Did General Hammond tell you about the...? Yes, sir. No, sir. No, sir, I don't *want* to do that, but soon enough there might not be a choice. ... Yes, sir, I'm aware that there are taxpaying citizens in this town--"  
  
Buffy groaned in frustration. "Gimme that," she snapped, grabbing the phone out of O'Neill's hand.  
  
"Hey!"  
  
Buffy ignored him and barked into the phone, "Hello? Could you guys stop worrying about cheesing off the taxpayers, and maybe start focusing on whether there'll *be* any taxpayers, or any taxes, or anything else left standing by next Tuesday?"  
  
"Miss, could you put Colonel O'Neill back on the phone?" a voice asked with a sharp Texas twang.  
  
"Sorry," Buffy answered. "Can't do that. You see, he's got to follow orders from you guys even when those orders stink, and if he tells you that ignoring him is stupid and crazy, you can just have him court-martialed or something. Me, I'm one of those taxpaying citizens you're worrying about, I don't have to follow your orders, and I'm telling you, if things go wrong and you don't have a Plan B, things are going to get bad. I mean biblically bad."  
  
"Ma'am, I'm reluctant to go forward with a plan that drastic if there are any alternatives at all," a second voice said, with a softer southern accent, eerily familiar.  
  
"Look, I don't know who you are, either of you, but maybe you should talk to someone who can actually *make* this decision? Because we're talking about the real thing here. You know, 'and the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a voice cried out from heaven, saying, it is done'?" Off O'Neill's odd look, she covered the phone with her hand and whispered, "Hunt for Red October. Mom's got a thing for Sean Connery."  
  
The Texas voice came back: "Ma'am, isn't it possible that you're overstating the case just a bit?"  
  
Buffy groaned. "Look, ask the Pentagon. Look up the Initiative, ask them about the Slayer, and you should find a lot of stuff about the end of the world, okay?"  
  
"That's going to take some time," Texas said.  
  
Voice Two added, "You're asking for an awful lot on your say-so," and this time Buffy *knew* she'd heard that voice somewhere before.  
  
"Hell-*o*?" Buffy snapped into the phone. "Not my say-so, okay? You guys have the information, assuming you didn't shred it all so you wouldn't have to know how badly the Initiative screwed up. Look, let's say you had a flying saucer in Area 51 that was malfunctioning and ready to destroy the world; would you hesitate to nuke *that*?"  
  
After a pause, Voice Two responded: "You may have a point there. I'll have my people look into it."  
  
Texas took a breath that Buffy could hear through the static, and then asked, "Can you put Colonel O'Neill back on the line?"  
  
"Oh. Right. Sure," Buffy said, handing the phone to O'Neill. "They want to talk to you again."  
  
O'Neill took the phone and shot Buffy a withering look. "Yes, sir. Yes, sir," he said into the phone, doing a lot more listening than talking, apparently, as Buffy walked towards the basement.  
  
Then the refrain changed: "Yes, Mr. President."  
  
Buffy froze, realizing just *why* Voice Two had sounded so familiar, and in her daze she forgot to step down when she reached the stairs to the basement.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"Are you sure she's okay?" Jack asked as Xander put a box into Joyce's jeep.  
  
Xander nodded. "The fall wouldn't faze her; she gets worse than that from the nightly vamps. She's probably just kinda mortified. She gets that way sometimes."  
  
"Ah."  
  
Riley came out with another box, almost too large for him to carry. "One more after this," he announced. "Buffy's got that one."  
  
"You need a hand, Riley?" Xander asked.  
  
"'Preciate it." Riley struggled with it as Xander came around to pick up one side. "You talk to your folks yet?"  
  
"Big surprise, they didn't listen," Xander said. "They haven't listened to me since I was four years old; why would they start now?"  
  
Jack cringed. "You mean to tell me you told all this to your *parents*?"  
  
Xander gave him a look. "Uh huh. Told them that I'd be out tonight impersonating a god, and that if I get eaten, these nice folks from the government are gonna turn downtown Sunnydale into a smoking hole in the ground. Not that anybody would notice the difference. Come on, I know I look dumb, but I can't look *that* dumb," he snapped. "I told 'em it would be a good idea to take a day trip tomorrow. Talked with Cordelia in L.A. and arranged for tickets to a show tomorrow night; if they're not paying, you can bet they'll be there."  
  
Riley nodded. "Best anyone can ask is that you try, man." He frowned as they finished easing the box into the jeep's cargo area. "Cordelia. Your ex, right? Anya know about her?"  
  
Xander sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "My breakup with Cordy is how Anya got to Sunnydale in the first place." Jack looked at him with what must have been a puzzled look, because Xander continued: "It was pretty messy. And then Anya came to town and there was this whole parallel-universe thing." He turned to Jack. "You wouldn't understand."  
  
"You'd be surprised," Jack commented.  
  
"So yeah, Anya knows about Cordy, but it's okay, because she knows that Cordy and I are deader than ... some really old dead guy. Relationship-wise, you know, not in the really being dead sense."  
  
Jack gave one of the boxes an experimental nudge to make room for the last crate soon to come. "This must be a really weird place to grow up," he mused.  
  
Xander nodded. "Yeah. If you can survive being a teenager in Sunnydale, you're ready to take on the world." He sighed. "Only problem with that is, a lot of kids never make it."  
  
"Like Darwin," Jack said with more than a hint of bitterness in his voice. "Survival of the fittest."  
  
"Yeah, except the tough guys end up dead and the ones who make it out are the little guys like Jonathan and the losers like me. Well, plus people who are good at fighting it. Like Buffy and Willow."  
  
Riley clapped a hand on Xander's shoulder. "I've seen you fight, Xander. Hell, half the Initiative couldn't do as well as you. And they were professionals."  
  
"I was lucky."  
  
Riley shook his head. "Not just lucky. Luck's not enough in this town."  
  
Xander looked up. "That's for sure." He stepped back from the jeep. "I'm gonna go see if Buffy needs a hand with that last box, unless - hey, the pizza's here," he called out.  
  
Jack looked at the panel truck that had pulled up to the house. "I think this is something else," he said, walking fast to catch up with the driver approaching the door.  
  
Two other men in the truck began unloading boxes; Xander cracked, "Either that or they really overdid it on the pepperoni."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
Buffy came down balancing the last box of records and artifacts from the storage closet Joyce had made of the spare bedroom, only to bump right into a pair of G.I. Joe types setting what looked like a steamer trunk down in the living room. Next to two others just like it.  
  
"That's not the pizza, I'm guessing?"  
  
"It is not," came the response from behind the box. She put it down to find the big guy slowly withdrawing one of those elaborate staff weapons from the first trunk, setting it aside, and pulling out a stiff metal contraption that looked like half a suit of armor. "Our equipment has arrived."  
  
"I guess the snake guys really go for the Medieval Times shtick, huh?"  
  
Teal'c didn't answer; instead, he slipped the armor over his head, touched a stud on the flaring metal collar, and was suddenly encased in a metal sculpture, a cobra's head that had extended from the collar over his head.  
  
It was just like what Buffy had seen in her dream.  
  
As she gaped, he touched the stud again, and the serpent's head snapped open, folding back in on itself, collapsing back into the collar. "The armor of the serpent guards," he said.  
  
"Yeah. Whoa. Color me impressed. That is ... definitely *you*."  
  
Teal'c pulled the armor back over his head and set it aside. "It is what I used to be. It symbolizes my enslavement. My deception by the false gods. It is everything I have rejected."  
  
"Hey, I didn't mean it like that," Buffy said quickly, maybe a bit too defensively. "I mean that you look good ... well ... it's just a piece of armor, you know? And it's gonna help get your friend back."  
  
"I cannot separate the armor from its symbolism that easily, Tarith'na. I committed acts of brutality while wearing the armor. Acts for which I merit a sentence of death. Deservedly so."  
  
"God, you could give Angel brooding lessons," Buffy sighed with frustration. "Look, Tank. Put the thing back on."  
  
"I..."  
  
"Put it back on," she repeated.  
  
He slowly pulled the armor back over his head.  
  
"Now close it up."  
  
Teal'c touched the stud again, and the serpent's head enveloped him.  
  
"Okay, now far as I know, there's only two people in Sunnydale who are gonna be sporting this look tonight, and that's the Colonel and you. And the both of you are good guys, right?"  
  
"To an extent-"  
  
"That's a yes," Buffy snapped. "The only two people wearing this are gonna be the toughest, most righteous champions that snake has ever seen, right? You're gonna go in there, you're gonna make it possible for us to get your friend and my Watcher out of there safe, and then we are gonna kick Kheper's brain-sucking serpentine ass back to the Nile. You understand me?"  
  
"I understand, Tarith'na."  
  
"Good," Buffy said. "What the hell else did you guys pack in these things?"  
  
Teal'c opened the cobra's head, removed the armor, and opened up the other two trunks. "Another set of armor for O'Neill, clothing for the disguises of Tara Maclay and Xander Harris, and weapons for Major Carter and Riley Finn."  
  
Buffy peered into the boxes. "Huh. Lotta stuff in there."  
  
Carter and O'Neill came back in just then. "They pack everything, Teal'c?"  
  
"It appears so, O'Neill." Teal'c pulled out another staff weapon and several of the bug-zappers. "Heavier arms are in the other containers."  
  
O'Neill reached in and came up with a long, heavy, menacing-looking shotgun. "I didn't ask for any SPAS-12's."  
  
"Indeed not. However, there appears to be an explanation," Teal'c continued, handing over a piece of paper.  
  
O'Neill looked it over. "For cryin' out loud, they've been watching too many ... uh ... Carter?"  
  
"Yes, sir?"  
  
"You mind checking the ammo boxes for the shotguns?"  
  
Carter looked in with a frown, then relaxed into a tight smile. "It might just be crazy enough to work."  
  
Buffy cleared her throat. "Uh, guys? I don't know if I remembered to mention this, but vampires plus guns equals dead good guys? As in us being dead? Or worse, undead?"  
  
"Way ahead of you, kiddo," O'Neill drawled, picking a shell out of the trunk and flipping it over to Buffy.  
  
It looked like a shotgun shell, only with a slug of wood in it. A pencil-sharp piece of wood. "Where did they get these?"  
  
"Made 'em," O'Neill said. "According to this, Siler's got a cousin works for Denver PD's SWAT team, and they borrowed all the riot-control wood slug ammo they could get their hands on. They must've had every pencil sharpener in Command going to get all this done."  
  
Xander looked over from the door. "Now *that* is smart."  
  
Buffy nodded. "You guys deal with vampires before, I take it?"  
  
That got a laugh from O'Neill. "Last Saturday they didn't exist, far as we knew. But hey, we're adaptable."  
  
Carter smiled. "We learn to improvise." She dug into the third crate. "We got all the C4 we'll need, detonators, timers ... hey, they even sent over some Willy Pete."  
  
"Willy Pete?" Xander asked. "Is that any relation to Willy the Snitch?"  
  
"White phosphorous grenades," Carter explained. They don't explode so much as burn. Finn, did you get heavy weapons training?"  
  
"Sure."  
  
"This is gonna be yours, then," she said, handing him a bulky rifle with an ugly-looking tube bolted beneath its barrel.  
  
"Uh, what's the point of the guns?" Buffy insisted. "I mean, it's great that you've got the stake-launcher thingies, and I can appreciate things that set vamps on fire, but what are bullets going to do other than, well, piss them off?"  
  
Carter picked up a curved gun magazine from the trunk. "Tracer."  
  
"As in...?"  
  
"Burn, vampire, burn," Xander said, his eyes widening. "I gotta hand it to you guys, you are not *nearly* as stupid as the last government operation to blow through town."  
  
"Hey!" Riley shouted. "I resemble that remark."  
  
"Present company excepted, of course," Xander continued. "Well, looks like you've got enough hardware for this anyway."  
  
"Too much hardware, actually," O'Neill said. "They fitted us out for a four-man strike, and the only ones who are gonna be carrying this stuff are Carter and Finn."  
  
Just then the door knocked; Joyce opened it quickly, only to be nearly bowled over by Anya, dressed up in olive-drab camouflage and carrying a duffel.  
  
"I'm ready to go," she announced, walking right past Joyce and up to the assembly.  
  
"They're not going to give you a gun," Xander said.  
  
"Oh, that's okay. I brought my own." Anya opened up her duffel bag and brought out a gaudily colored weapon as long as a hockey stick, with a purple pump-grip on its lower edge and a bulbous tank behind the trigger.  
  
Carter cringed; O'Neill groaned and leaned back against a wall. Then he stood up and glared at Anya. "Do you think this is some kind of game? You think you're going in there on a lark? This is the real thing. Something goes wrong, you're dead."  
  
"I know what the risks are. I've been around death and destruction a lot longer than *you* have," Anya shot back. "Besides, it's holy water. That works well on vampires."  
  
"No," O'Neill snapped. "No, no, no, and in case there was any misunderstanding, no. We are *not* going to turn this into some kind of war game. The Harris kid and your friend are coming just to get us in the door and give us enough of a distraction for Carter and Finn to get in, rig the bomb, get out Daniel and the English guy, and finish the job. Everyone else is staying behind."  
  
"But-" Buffy sputtered.  
  
"Ah!"  
  
"O'Neill-"  
  
"Ah!"  
  
"Sir, are you certain-"  
  
"Ah!" O'Neill barked for the third time, holding up a finger. "This is how it's going to be."  
  
Xander turned to the crates and, before anyone had a chance to object, picked up one of the machine guns.  
  
"Hey, put that down!"  
  
"Listen, Colonel. There's something you've got to understand about us," Xander snapped. "We didn't get into the evil-fighting business because it looked like fun, or because we wanted to do things in real life like what you see in video games." He pulled out the gun's magazine while he was talking, yanked at a lever, and when a shell popped out of the side of the gun, he caught it in mid-air and placed it on the coffee table. "We got into this because we got sick of seeing our friends and classmates disappear without a trace, finding names of kids we played with when we were little showing up in the high school paper's obituary column." He quickly took the gun apart into five pieces, sighted down the barrel, and began to put it together again. "Will and I, we found out about all this from nearly being eaten once, and I don't know how many times we came close to being snack food without even knowing it."  
  
"Wait, back up," O'Neill said. "Your school paper had an obituary column? Like a regular thing? You were losing *that* many students?"  
  
"Welcome to Sunnydale," Xander said grimly, sliding the weapon's parts together and tapping them on the ground. "This place may be hell on earth, but it's our home. And God help us, we're the ones who hold the line against those things out there." He picked up the gun and its ammunition, looked at the taped-together magazines. "You sure you want your mags taped up like that? Doesn't it lead to jamming?"  
  
"Only if it's end-to-end," Carter said. "Tape them like this, and the ends are protected by the bulk of the gun."  
  
"Gotcha," Xander said, locked the magazine in place, and handed it to O'Neill. "My point is, whatever is waiting for us down there, we're in. We've lost too many friends to back out now."  
  
Everyone looked from Xander to O'Neill. Hope and expectation radiated from Buffy's friends and family, while O'Neill's people looked a little more ambivalent. Or rather, Carter did. Teal'c was giving the Colonel a hard stare.  
  
"Point taken," O'Neill finally said. "But I can't give out military hardware to people who aren't checked out on it, and I don't feel right taking anyone along on the assault team unless they're either well-protected or able to defend themselves."  
  
Buffy grabbed the longbow and arrows from the coffee table. "I think we can take care of ourselves."  
  
"I'll be okay," Willow said. "I've got a few tricks up my sleeve."  
  
"Will, you sure? 'Cos if you want to sit this one out..."  
  
"You might need me. I can do some glamours of my own, or ... ooh! There's a new one I've been waiting to try."  
  
"Which one?" Tara asked nervously.  
  
"If everyone could, you know, kinda stay a little bit away from the fireplace? Tsul'kalu, lord of thunder, I beseech thee ... bring forth the lightning and the thunder ... *fulgus*!" Willow shouted.  
  
With a deafening *bang*, a jagged spark of lightning shot from her fingertips to the poker by the fireplace. As everyone scrambled for cover, Willow yelped and jammed her right hand under her left arm, squeezing, a pained expression on her face.  
  
"Willow! You all right?"  
  
"Yeah - ooch! Just kinda - aah! - not used to that spell," Willow answered, blowing rapidly on her fingertips. "Kinda a last resort thing, you know? Buffy, do you have an axe I can use?"  
  
"Got a couple upstairs."  
  
Carter picked up a small case from one of the trunks along with a bundle of clothing. "Is there a room I can use to help Tara get ready? This is going to take some time."  
  
"It's ... I mean, it's just a dress, isn't it?" Tara asked hesitantly.  
  
"Lot more than that, I'm afraid. Some pretty elaborate stuff you're going to have to wear, not to mention the makeup."  
  
"Oh ... well..."  
  
"My room's fine, guys. Knock yourselves out."  
  
Xander nodded. "I'll just find a closet and throw my stuff on," he said, looking at the other bundle of clothes.  
  
"You will require assistance," Teal'c said.  
  
"I've been dressing myself since I was four."  
  
"But not as a god," Teal'c countered. "Before I became First Prime, I was sometimes called upon as his personal servant. I will make certain you are garbed appropriately."  
  
"There's a couple of dummy ribbon devices in the case where the clothes were," Carter said.  
  
Xander looked in. "Yeah. Wait, weren't there three of those things?"  
  
"Don't worry about it," Carter called from the staircase.  
  
"Okay." Xander looked from the clothes to Teal'c, who held a small box of his own. "What's that?"  
  
"Cosmetic paint."  
  
"Makeup?" Xander yelped. "Whoa, wait a minute. Nobody said anything about makeup."  
  
"It will make the difference between Kheper mistaking you for Apophis," Teal'c resopnded, "and Kheper recognizing you as an enemy and executing you on the spot."  
  
"Oh, well, in that case ... makeup!" Xander called in his best Milton Berle voice.  
  
As Xander and Teal'c walked off, Buffy shook her head and went over to her mother. "You should get going soon, Mom."  
  
"I know, Buffy. I just..."  
  
"It'll be okay, Mom. We'll get through this. I know we're kind of in Keystone Cop mode right now, but ... there's nobody I'd rather have backing me up when things get ugly."  
  
Joyce sighed. "I'll try not to worry. I promise. Just ... call me when it's over? I'll call when I find a place to spend the night, I'll leave the number on the answering machine."  
  
"I'll call. I promise."  
  
Joyce smiled. "I'll hold you to that."  
  
Buffy closed her eyes tight. "Mom ... in case it doesn't work out right ... if worst comes to worst ... could you tell Angel? Tell him ... tell him I'm sorry? For everything?"  
  
Joyce winced. "Sure. I'll do that ... if it comes to that. You promise to try and make sure it doesn't come to that?"  
  
"I promise," Buffy said, and hugged her mother. "Now get going, okay? And drive safe."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
Xander flexed his hands, trying to get a feel for the metal glove in his right hand. He was having pretty bad flashbacks to another magical glove he'd run across once, and had pestered Teal'c and O'Neill until they had assured him that the contraption on his hand was merely a facsimile of the snake-thing's weapon. He'd gotten a little concerned about the fact that while O'Neill and Teal'c were now carrying boom-sticks and wearing bug-zappers in holsters on their forearms, Xander himself - and Tara - were defenseless; Teal'c had reassured him that the snakes generally left the artillery in the hands of their minions.  
  
He'd tried to reassure, at any rate. Xander was feeling far from reassured at the moment.  
  
This was insane, he decided. Which was probably the best thing this plan had going for it.  
  
Tara was trying her best to walk in a haughty strut, but it was pretty obvious she was terrified; the tight, revealing outfit wasn't helping her posture *or* her confidence.  
  
"Relax, Tara. All ya gotta do is keep the mojo going and fade into the background."  
  
"I know. I just ... I feel naked," she whispered.  
  
"I know. I wish I'd taken something. A picnic knife. A rock. Something."  
  
"I mean literally. This ... this outfit ... and I know Willow was trying to be supportive, but..."  
  
"But wolf whistles don't help with the self-confidence. I am *so* with you on that," he muttered. "Look on the bright side. Even the Colonel's in makeup."  
  
"Yeah, but he's all ... armor-y."  
  
"Look, if something goes wrong, they step right in front of us and put that armor to good use."  
  
Spike turned back to face them. "Will you two shut it? You want to announce to the bleedin' West Coast that you're fakes?"  
  
"Hey, you're supposed to be bait."  
  
"I'm a prisoner being brought back for bloody torture and whatnot. I'm supposed to be pissy. You're supposed to be all high and mighty and superior; don't even want to think how much mojo it's going to take to pull that off."  
  
"The glamour's easy," Tara said.  
  
"Right. You can do it in your sleep, Tara," Xander said encouragingly.  
  
"Well, hopefully not in my sleep?"  
  
They took a turn through the disused sewer pipe and came to a roughly cut door. "This is it," Spike announced, prying the door open to reveal a corridor beyond.  
  
O'Neill looked at the grimy passageway. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"  
  
Nobody responded for a moment.  
  
"I believe so, O'Neill," Teal'c finally answered. "However, I still do not understand why the coyote does not fall until after he notices he has passed the edge of the cliff."  
  
Xander gaped at Teal'c. "Did you-?" Then at O'Neill: "Did he-?"  
  
O'Neill took a breath. "Game faces, everyone," he said, and touched a stud on his armor; the metal shield extended from the back of his collar, arching over his head, enveloping him, sealing his head in the striking-cobra helmet. Teal'c did likewise, shifting his hold on his staff from a walking-stick to a weapon's grip.  
  
Tara muttered a few words; her eyes flashed white, and as she gripped Xander's hand, he felt the magic course through him.  
  
"Showtime," O'Neill announced from within the serpent's helm, and the five stepped through the rusted doorway into enemy territory.  
  
end part ten 


	11. Worst Case Scenario

author's note:  
  
Thanks to Celli for beta work; time's gonna come soon when I'll wonder how I ever did my fic writing without it. And also to the infamous Horsechicks of the Apocalypse, for sending good vibes. Much needed.  
  
Chapter 12 is in progress now, but will probably be several weeks in the writing.  
  
Hold onto your hats, everyone. (And I am not making idle conversation! Hold onto your hats! Hats! Hold! Good.) (A free stale M&M to the first person who gets that reference.)  
  
(Standard disclaimers in Part I.)  
  
---  
  
"Take a moment and savor the irony," Buffy said.  
  
Willow looked from the open manhole to the statue staring down at them with a benevolent gaze. "You mean the way he looks all kind and wholesome?"  
  
"Well, yeah, that plus he's got this happy look and he's staring at the very spot where he got blown to smithereenes."  
  
Riley looked up. "So that was the Mayor, huh?"  
  
"Kinda-sorta. I mean, he wasn't eighteen feet tall. Well, not until he turned into the snake; once he did that, he was more like fifty feet long, but he couldn't look all warm and fuzzy then."  
  
"Plus which, they probably didn't want to immortalize him slaughtering the students and eating the principal," Willow added.  
  
Carter blinked at that as she hooked up the Humvee's winch to one end of the remote-control cart. "That was a joke, right?"  
  
"Nope," Willow said. "One bite. Chomp."  
  
Carter shuddered. "And stuff like that just ... happens. Regularly." She shook her head. "How can you live like that?"  
  
Anya looked up from the Humvee's fender where she had been leaning. "Actually, Ascensions don't happen every day. Last one before this was, oh, two, maybe three hundred years ago, and that was far worse."  
  
Carter looked at the blackened ruins of the high school. "And some magic rite did all that damage?"  
  
"Oh, no, that was the bomb they used to blow up the Mayor."  
  
"Bomb? Isn't that a bit much to take out one ... of those?" Carter asked as she started the winch.  
  
Anya shook her head as she wandered over to the manhole, resting the water cannon on her shoulder. "I don't think so. I mean, this is the only time in recorded history that an Ascension ended with a body count under a hundred."  
  
Carter looked back to the ruins, then at the statue gazing at them from the center of the park, and finally over to the manhole, where the bomb on its cart was now fully through the opening, slowly lowering into the sewer pipes Buffy had assured them could hold the bomb, the strike team, and possibly the Humvee in a pinch. "How's it coming?"  
  
Willow called, "Almost there." She peered into the manhole; apparently Buffy and Riley had gone down to guide the device down. "Stop!" she shouted. "Could you take it up about one foot?"  
  
"What happened?" Carter asked, reversing the winch for a moment.  
  
"The thing was starting to tip upside down. You got it, Buffy?" Willow asked. Obviously hearing an affirmative, Willow nodded. "Lower away, Major."  
  
A minute later, the bomb was on its wheels, extra weapons in a duffel lashed to its side, and all five of them were slowly making their way up the sewer pipe.  
  
They were a pretty motley group, Carter thought, but that didn't mean they wouldn't be effective. She shifted her weight as they progressed, their pace determined by the speed of the bomb's driving wheels; she was carrying a lot more hardware than she'd anticipated.  
  
Buffy held point, longbow at the ready; if you discounted the trendy clothes, she looked like something out of one of the Dungeons and Dragons books Carter's brother had used for the damn roleplaying games as a kid. Longbow with an arrow nocked, a sword at her back in a sheath, light on her feet ... it was surreal. And Carter had to remind herself that the kid was a damn good fighter - Colonel O'Neill's misgivings aside, almost *nobody* could hold their own in a hammer-and-tongs hand-to-hand fight against Teal'c like Buffy Summers had on their first encounter.  
  
The other two girls were much more of a concern. Willow was holding back, staying near the rolling bomb, clutching a vicious-looking axe with a grip that looked less intimidating than terrified. Anya, on the other hand, was brazenly marching along, holding her ridiculous-looking water gun as though she could take on all comers.  
  
If there was combat, Carter worried, it would come down to Riley Finn and herself, both overloaded with a lot more weaponry than Carter had initially intended on carrying. Riley had the worst of it by far; he was carrying the M4 carbine with the grenade launcher attached, one of the SPAS-12 shotguns slung on his shoulder, with grenades, tracer ammunition, and wood-slug shotgun shells in his tactical vest, and on top of that, he was carrying a pistol and the zat gun Carter had reluctantly given him. Carter wasn't much better off; her smaller frame was burdened with more than her standard-heavy combat load, MP-5 machine gun slung from her shoulders, shotgun strapped to her back, zat gun and pistol on her hips, plus a couple of other items she'd grabbed especially for the occasion. The two of them had enough ordnance between them to fight off a batallion of whatever the enemy could throw at them ... assuming they didn't tip over or collapse under their own weight.  
  
Buffy turned into a branching pipe and halted suddenly, leveling her bow. Carter quickly halted the bomb cart, bringing up her MP-5; Riley brought up his shotgun and slowly moved to her side as she crept up closer to Buffy.  
  
It happened in an instant, before Carter even had time to breathe; Buffy drew back the bow and loosed an arrow in a single fluid motion, and Carter barely had time to register that there was someone further down the pipe - several someones - when the arrow struck home, dead center on a human-like form. It staggered back - but even as it did, three others were charging, bumping it, stirring up the cloud of dust that consumed the first target.  
  
There wasn't time to shout a warning; all Carter could do was bring up her gun and--  
  
--but before she could even flip the safety from "safe" to "live", there was already another arrow in the air, and Buffy was reaching back into her quiver for a third - nocked the arrow, drew, fired, quicker to do it than even to say the words - the second creature staggered - a fourth arrow ready before the third even hit its target, airborne even as the third vampire was thrown back against the wall of the pipe from the impact - and now the fourth vampire staggered, growled, showed its fangs, and then collapsed into a pile of ashes.  
  
Carter hadn't even had time to bring up the sights on her gun. "Wow," she breathed quietly.  
  
"You think they heard that?" Buffy asked.  
  
Carter shook her head dumbly. "I don't ... that was too fast," she stammered. "I don't think they could have picked up on that."  
  
"I hope not," Buffy whispered. "Because if they're all ready for us in there, it's gonna make finding Giles and Jackson - aw, crap!" she shouted, her eyes locked on a spot behind Carter's shoulder.  
  
Carter didn't see it, but she did feel it: an incredibly sharp pain in the neck, like someone driving nails into her jugular. She didn't say anything, didn't scream, didn't make a noise.  
  
Instead, she simply scythed her fist down, blindly striking behind her, and felt her target try to double over, shouting in pain even as it let up the bite - only to get slammed in the nose as Carter snapped her fist back up as though on a pivot. The attacker jerked back, moaning as Carter followed up her one-two strike with a thrust from her left elbow right into its solar plexus; it staggered, then charged - only to be met by Carter's right fist, right above the heart, and the wood stake pounding home, driven in by the momentum of all of Samantha Carter's weight plus fifty pounds of government-issue weaponry.  
  
She shouted out from the exertion, almost slamming the stake right through the vampire into the sewer wall - and the creature disintegrated.  
  
Carter let go of the stake, letting it hang from the lanyard she'd used to lash it to her wrist, and all of a sudden realized that she'd never even seen the face of her attacker.  
  
"Not bad," Buffy said, eyes wide, arrow ready but coming down. "Wow. That was quick."  
  
"I didn't even see it coming," Carter gasped, eyes wide.  
  
"Yeah, but you're still alive," Willow pointed out. "A lot of people end up dead even when they see it coming."  
  
"We'd better move," Riley muttered. "We need to be inside the compound before the others get there."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"Is it too late to say I've got an idea?" Xander asked, raising his eyebrows at how his voice sounded to his own ears.  
  
One of the snake guards behind him turned and made an expression with his hands - O'Neill, Xander guessed, based on the pale hands - but no words were spoken.  
  
"O'Neill," the other guard said in an amplified voice. "You must disable the helmet's sound damper."  
  
O'Neill shrugged, touched a control on his collar, and said, "Can you hear me now?"  
  
"Loud and clear."  
  
"You've got an idea, kid, any time's good. The only time it's too late is when you're dead."  
  
"That's reassuring," Xander sighed. "So how swift on the uptake are these snake guys? I mean, are we talking actually clear thinkers or are they down at the before-I-kill-you-Mister-Bond level of Big Bads?"  
  
Teal'c turned to face O'Neill; Xander couldn't tell from the helmet, but he would have bet that the big guy's eyebrow was arched.  
  
"They like to gloat," O'Neill finally said.  
  
"Great," Xander said. "That way I can get King Tut talking in English pretty quick."  
  
"How are you going to do that?" Spike snapped.  
  
"Trust me, Spike. You're going to love it."  
  
"Wrong on both counts, Harris. I don't trust you and I already hate this plan of yours."  
  
"You're bitching to me about trust issues, Mister Evil-Is-My-Business?"  
  
"Enough," Teal'c boomed.  
  
"Yeah, sorry," Xander muttered. "You'll keep feeding me any hints I need through the radio, right?" he asked, pointing at his ear and the discreet receiver nestled in it.  
  
Teal'c touched his collar, and his voice came through the earpiece. "I will do so, Xander Harris."  
  
A minute more, and they ran into the first signs of life - or of the undead, Xander corrected himself, facing down four vamps in game face, carrying staff weapons. He stood up straight, extending his hand blindly to one side; Tara took it, straightening out her body, making herself look as imperious as Xander hoped he did; the only sign of the strain she had to be feeling was a tremor in the hand that gripped his own. He glanced at her, saw her eyes flash from the illusion, and favored her with a small, quick smile.  
  
Teal'c advanced, his own staff weapon leveled. "Tell your master," he said in a booming voice, "that the System Lord Apophis has come to speak with him."  
  
"Nobody passes. I don't care who you are."  
  
Xander let Tara's hand go and walked right up to the lead vampire, staring it down. "I have come a long way to speak with your master. Will you stand aside and let us speak with him? Or will you stand in our way and be destroyed?"  
  
"Get bent," the vampire spat.  
  
"Okay," Xander said, mentally cringing, hoping that it didn't break the illusion. He took one step to his left.  
  
Teal'c didn't wait; he snapped open his bug-zapper and fired three times into the vampire's chest. The creature staggered, then righted itself, took half a threatening step forward and then dissolved into thin air, not even leaving dust behind.  
  
The three other vampires took a step forward; O'Neill raised his own bug-zapper, snapped it open, and barked, "I wouldn't."  
  
"Now," Xander announced. "Tell your master I have come. Or die. Those are your only choices."  
  
The three remaining vampires looked at Xander and took another step forward. Xander gulped - hoped that the spell didn't magnify the sound - and raised his right hand. The vamps looked at it - shrank at the sight of the ornate glove, the jewel in his palm - and then they backed away, terrified.  
  
"Good choice," Xander boomed. "Lead us."  
  
The vampires turned as one, gingerly looking over their shoulders, turning down one of the corridors.  
  
"Lemme guess," O'Neill's voice came through the earpiece as the group followed them. "Channeling Magneto, were you?"  
  
"Nah," Xander whispered. "Doctor Doom. Magneto, you're not talking so much of an evil overlord, more just your average psychotic villain. Totally wrong vibe for what we're trying to do."  
  
"Ah."  
  
They turned one corner, another, a third, entered a large chamber, and stopped cold.  
  
An elaborately dressed man was strapped into a throne, arms, legs, chest, neck, and forehead bound tightly against the metal of the chair. Two female vampires attended him closely, while a third brought a bowl filled with water.  
  
Xander looked on with increasing anxiety, and then had to bite his tongue to keep from yelping as the third vampire gingerly extracted a slick, slimy creature from the bowl. The eel-like *thing* cried out shrilly, then twisted in the vampire's grip, facing the body in the throne.  
  
The vampire placed it on the man's chest, and it slithered up to his neck for a moment, paused, and then lashed out, launching down through his mouth into his throat and burrowing itself in. The man jolted in the restraints; his eyes flared red, then white, and then he relaxed.  
  
"It is done," he said in a deep reverberating voice. "Release me."  
  
The vampires immediately undid his straps; he stood up, flexed his arms, and took in the five newcomers. "I see you have brought me a gift," he said. "Welcome."  
  
"You will bow before Lord Kheper," one of the female vampires snapped to Xander.  
  
Teal'c snapped open the front of his armor, revealing the gold brand on his forehead, and the steely gaze in his eyes. "The System Lord Apophis bows to none," he said sharply, and just as abruptly triggered the helmet closed.  
  
Kheper responded in harsh tones, in a language Xander had never heard before; Teal'c's voice came through his radio earpiece: "I bow to the will of the System Lords, of course."  
  
Xander shook his head. "It would please me to have this ... thing," he said, poking a finger at Spike, "able to understand just what it is he defies. Let us speak his language, so he will understand his failure."  
  
Kheper nodded. "Of course," he said, dropping to one knee.  
  
Xander gritted his teeth. *Here we go.*  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
Anya cradled her water cannon as she entered the next chamber of the compound, and stopped short. Three vampires stood near a pair of doors, with the intimidating-but-bored-as-anything look she'd seen a thousand times from prison guards of one sort or another. Two doors. Two prisoners. Anya hadn't done too great at math, but she *could* count that high.  
  
She could either try and sneak past them and end up as hors d'oueurves, she figured, or try something unexpected.  
  
"Hey there! This is Kheper's place, right?" she asked, walking right up to the vampires.  
  
The vampires jumped a bit, then frowned at one another in confusion.  
  
Well, Anya figured, nobody would have expected *that*. Taking advantage of the silence, she plunged ahead: "Well, I heard he was going to try and bring on an apocalypse, and I figured, hey! Sounds like a party! But I wasn't sure whether you'd want alcoholic beverages, or snack foods of questionable nutritional value, or maybe a couple or three fresh junior-high students to nibble on? So I thought I might drop by and ask what you needed."  
  
"What's *that*?" one of the vampires growled, pointing at the water cannon.  
  
"What, this? Oh, silly me. It's just water," she said, pulling the trigger and spraying water into the faces of all three vampires.  
  
They screamed, clawing at their eyes; Anya shrugged and pumped the slide on the cannon twice. "Oops. Did I forget to mention it was holy water?" she asked; then she pulled the trigger again, sending a high-pressure blast of liquid right into the chest of the nearest vampire.  
  
He howled, staggered, fell to his knees, and crumbled into dust. The two other vamps scowled, game faces angry and scarred from the splash of holy water, and came face to face with the two military members of the party.  
  
"This is a joke, right?" one vampire said with a dismissive wave at Riley's shotgun.  
  
Riley fired right into its chest.  
  
The vampire snorted, gave a derisive laugh, and then winced. Anya thought that the look on his face as he disintegrated was actually pretty humorous.  
  
The third vampire didn't bother with any banter; it just gathered itself and jumped at the group; Anya pulled her trigger, but all that came out was a puff of mist. She cursed to herself for forgetting to charge the weapon, and rapidly pumped the action, hoping that the vamp wouldn't do too much damage before someone killed it-  
  
-when Carter put a three-round burst into it at point-blank range.  
  
This time the vampire didn't laugh or scoff; it screamed, grabbing at its clothes as they caught fire from the burning phosphor of the tracer rounds. It tore at the clothing, clawing at the holes in its chest, and burst into flame, collapsing to the ground, howling in pain as the flames consumed it and turned it to ash.  
  
"Crap," Buffy growled. "That probably woke up the whole compound."  
  
"Just this room," Willow said. "I had a sound-damper spell going. Figured that whoever was in here might be loud."  
  
"Go, Willow," Buffy said, sighing.  
  
Anya quickly tried the doors, one at a time. "Hello? Can you open up in there?"  
  
"Well, if we could, that would rather defeat the purpose of keeping one prisoner, don't you think?"  
  
"Giles!" Anya called. "Thank goodness you're all right. Is the other brainiac there with you?"  
  
"I'm fine, thank you for asking. Anybody got a key for these doors?" Daniel asked from behind the other door.  
  
Buffy stepped up, called out "Stand back," and kicked down both doors, one at a time. "Won't win points for style, but hey. Giles, you okay there?"  
  
"I ... ah ... yes," Giles muttered. "Took your time about it, I see."  
  
"Well, you know, we would have come earlier, but Xander had rented a video, and the pizza place did *not* deliver in thirty minutes or less ... come on, Giles. We had to prepare. You know, we've actually got a plan this time?"  
  
Giles groaned. "Perish the thought," he said with a rueful smile, getting to his feet and staggering. "Ow. Bloody hell. Those electrical devices ... what were they called again?"  
  
"Zats," Carter offered.  
  
"Zat. Hmf. Short for?"  
  
"Er, zat'nikatel," Daniel said.  
  
"Ah, yes. Those ... zat'nikatels. Quite ... ow ... potent." He sighed. "It rather makes me nostalgic for demons that would simply bludgeon one unconscious."  
  
Riley came over and helped him to his feet. "Easy, Giles. Now we've got you guys, all we have to do is get the bomb in place and book out of here."  
  
"Let's just hope that they don't go pouring out of every exit at the first hint of trouble," Daniel said.  
  
"There's only two ways in or out, Daniel. The Colonel and Teal'c mined the front way, and we've got charges set up on the back entrance. Once we're clear of the two exits, first we blow the doors closed, then we set off this thing."  
  
"How much farther do we have to go?" Anya asked.  
  
"Only a couple of chambers farther down," Carter answered. "We just need to keep the Goa'uld distracted long enough to find a corner to park the bomb, cover it up, and get ourselves out of here and clear of the blast zone."  
  
"Rather a chancy thing to leave to a timer," Giles mused out loud.  
  
"No timer," Carter said. "The Colonel and I each have radio detonators for the exit charges and the bomb itself. We're not leaving this to chance." She triggered her radio. "Colonel, we've got the hostages free. We're going to position the bomb now and begin our withdrawal."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"Get him talking and *keep* him talking, kid," O'Neill rasped to Xander through the radio earpiece. "Carter's got the hostages out and she's about to plant the bomb. We need to buy her about five or ten minutes to get it done and get clear."  
  
Xander made an "OK" sign with his left hand, behind his back. To Kheper, he said, "You have done well. A rather ... impressive army you have collected. But why here? Why this place?"  
  
Kheper spread his hands wide. "Since my exile from the Valley, I have seen these ... vermin spread. They have forgotten that we were their gods. That we created their civilization." He smiled. "The System Lords no longer need this world, do they?"  
  
"No, they do not," Teal'c whispered in Xander's ear, and Xander repeated.  
  
"This place ... this village ... holds a secret. Near us, beneath the destroyed school, there lies a gateway to another dimension. One that, if opened, will eradicate the humans from this world, and bring forth an army of creatures. An army fit for command by a Goa'uld."  
  
*Keep him talking,* Xander thought. "Why now? You've ... you have been in exile for a long time."  
  
"Settesh," Kheper spat, pacing around the throne. "I ruled the Valley as Nub-Kheper-Ra Intef, until Settesh ... arranged ... my fall. The fool could not keep his place among the System Lords, he was hunted and reviled, and yet he felt it necessary to drive *me* from power?"  
  
"Perhaps he was afraid," Xander commented, on Teal'c's prompting.  
  
"Afraid?" Kheper snapped. "My lord Apophis, had Settesh shown *any* signs of sense, he would have been able to seize control of this world after the System Lords abandoned us. He had none. *None.* He would rather gather fools to him, be worshipped by the dozens, rather than be known and renowned by the millions."  
  
"You were also an outcast."  
  
Kheper hissed, a deep, reverberating sound. "Because I threatened the place of the System Lords. I know they are your kindred, my lord Apophis, but they were even greater fools. My exile ... do you remember what Ra said to me?"  
  
Xander waited for the prompt, heard nothing, then gritted his teeth and shook his head. "I am afraid I do not."  
  
"He said that my place was as his herald, that the Scarab was not truly a high god, but merely a *symbol* of the House of Ra. That by desiring my own place among the System Lords, I threatened him. As though there were not enough who already held the rank of System Lord? As though there were no more room in the Council for me? I was *loyal*, I acted to strengthen my lord - to strengthen the House of Ra - and for this loyalty, I was cast out! Had I not the foresight to retain my sarcophagus, I would be five thousand years *dead* by now!"  
  
"Five thousand years," Xander mused. "So why now? What changed?"  
  
"You do not know?"  
  
"No."  
  
"The renegade Settesh is dead, my lord," Kheper said. "Five seasons ago, his ... excesses ... were finally his undoing. The armed forces of this nation found him and destroyed him." He lowered his head. "It grieves me to give you such news."  
  
Xander raised his hand, praying he was guessing right. "He was one of us, but still, as you say, he was a fool. Continue."  
  
"The fall of Settesh releases my hands, my lord. I have known of this place, this gateway, for a hundred years and more, but until now I could not move for fear Settesh would spoil my stroke. I have positioned myself in this place for fifteen years, preparing for the time when I could unleash it." He turned to face Xander. "Something else happened five seasons ago. The school above us ... they called it a 'high school', as though it were an ordinary school, but it was in fact a training academy for warriors. The pupils of the academy rose up in battle against a creature ... one of the monsters that is attracted to the rift between dimensions. They defeated it, but many of their number fell ... and allowed me to begin to build my army."  
  
Xander gulped. "Keep him talking," O'Neill hissed in his ear. "They're almost there."  
  
"Go on," Xander said.  
  
"The fallen were my first warriors ... those that were still in their graves. From them I learned of the forces that roam this village, disorganized, frenzied, but if harnessed, a mighty force. And from them I learned of those who know how to harness the power of the rift. From them I learned of those to seek out, those whose knowledge and power could be bent to my will."  
  
"They ... live?" Xander stammered, praying that Kheper didn't pick up on the waver in his voice, that Tara's illusion would hold.  
  
Kheper shook his head. "They have fallen. All but one, all but the most valiant. He is my source of knowledge, my chieftain, and he will be my herald to the System Lords."   
  
He gestured with a finger to a form behind him. "Come forward. I have waited five thousand years, my lord, but I finally have a servant worthy of the name of First Prime."  
  
A hooded man stepped forward to Kheper's side. "Come, my boy. I wish to introduce you to the god Apophis ... soon, my peer. And his First Prime ... soon, your peer."  
  
"That's no god," the First Prime said in a derisive voice.  
  
"What?" Kheper shouted.  
  
The First Prime slowly removed his hood, keeping his head bowed. His forehead was tattoed - branded - with the raised gold image of a beetle, a scarab, much as Teal'c's was imprinted with the oval serpentine symbol.  
  
Then he raised his head, and Xander's heart froze in his chest.  
  
The First Prime's face was that of a childhood tormentor ... an unlikely confidant ... a comrade in arms ... and perhaps, if the fates had been kind, a friend.  
  
"Gotta tell you, that look is *not* you, Harris," Larry said with a touch of bitterness in his voice.  
  
"Lawrence, what is this blasphemy?" Kheper hissed.  
  
"His name is Xander Harris, and if he's a god, then I'm the Duchess of York."  
  
Kheper's eyes flared. "An impostor?" He stepped forward; O'Neill and Teal'c raised their staff weapons, but Kheper raised his right hand with a flourish; with a dull concussion, the two armored guards were swept off their feet and smashed into the wall. Tara got caught in the backwash and collided with O'Neill as he crumpled, while Spike slammed headfirst into the wall.  
  
Xander swallowed as Kheper grabbed his jaw, blinking, then staring at his prey with those malevolent flashing eyes. "An impostor," he hissed. "Not a Goa'uld. Not even a Tok'ra. An impostor." The hand released Xander's jaw, and then the fingers splayed out again, and suddenly Xander felt as though a drill were burrowing into his brain. "Who sent you? Who dares stand in my way?" Kheper roared.  
  
Through the screaming agony Xandee thought he heard a dull explosive *thump* off down one of the halls. Kheper blinked, but did not let up.  
  
Then there came a second *thump*, then a shrill, echoing *scree*, like a bug-zapper going off, and *that* got Kheper's attention, causing him to turn and break off the attack.  
  
"Lawrence! Do *not* let them leave!" Kheper shouted. "Torak, attend!" he called, and a monstrous form detached itself from the shadows in the back of the throne room and followed as he swept out the door.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"Not much further," Carter mused, looking at the map. "Just another chamber over, and we can set this thing and get out of here."  
  
Willow looked from Carter, manipulating the controller for the bomb cart, to Daniel and Giles, walking close by the bomb. Daniel looked okay - but Giles seemed to be having trouble keeping his balance, leaning against the wall, using a purloined staff weapon to try and hold himself upright. "Giles, are you all right?" she asked.  
  
"I ... I will be, Willow. I suppose I still haven't shaken the effects of that weapon."  
  
Daniel blinked, frowned, and then sildled over to Carter. "The zat effect shouldn't last this long, unless while he was out ... oh boy," he muttered. "Sam, have you got a spare zat?"  
  
"There's one in the bag lashed to the cart," Sam said. Willow looked over at the cart-  
  
-just in time to see a bolt of plasma slam into the control panel for the bomb.  
  
The cart shuddered to a stop, sparking from the control panel; Carter and Riley instinctively dove for the ground, while Buffy whirled around to face the source of the blast. Willow hugged the far wall and looked in the same direction-  
  
-to see Giles holding the staff weapon, swinging its opened end from the bomb to Buffy, leveling his aim at her heart.  
  
Anya jumped on his back right as he triggered the weapon again, trying to bring him down or at least deflect his aim, but even as Willow brought the lightning spell into her head, the two were tagged by an angry electrical charge.  
  
Willow whipped her head around to see Daniel with a leveled bug-zapper, but then another movement pulled her eyes further over ... to see Buffy crumple to the ground, teeth gritted and bared in agony, whimpering.  
  
Willow ran over to her friend, ready to help her to her feet, waiting for her to spring back up, but something drew her up short. Partly the horrible charred stench, partly the sight of Buffy unconscious on the ground, eyes rolled up until only the whites were showing, mouth twisted into a rictus of pain. But mostly, what gave Willow pause - turned her stomach - was looking at Buffy's right knee. Or more precisely, the carbonized ruin of flesh and bone that had been her knee, until the staff weapon had done its work.  
  
"Buffy!" Willow screamed, shaking Buffy's shoulders, then jerked back as the Slayer moaned once in pain.  
  
Giles was stumbling to his feet, scrambling over to Buffy, hands empty. He took one look and gasped. "Oh, God. Oh, my God. Buffy? Oh, God...."  
  
end part eleven 


	12. Live Free or Die

(Author's note: Thanks to Celli for beta, and to everyone who's sent encouragement. The story is complete, and will be posted one part a day until I hit the end. Thanks to all for the patience you've shown.)  
  
(Standard disclaimers in Part I.)  
  
---  
part twelve  
  
"Stupid, stupid, *stupid*," Daniel hissed. "I should have *remembered* about the nish'ta."  
  
"We *all* missed it," Carter said soothingly. "It's done, it's over, we just have to go on from here."  
  
"Easy for you to say, Sam," Daniel shot back. "You weren't the one sitting here all day working on escape plans, while forgetting your fellow prisoner was susceptible to Goa'uld nind-control techniques."  
  
Giles groaned as he looked Buffy over, feeling what felt like every eye in the compound boring in on him. "I shot her," he whispered, staring at her mangled leg. "Dear God, I was aiming to *kill* her."  
  
"It wasn't your fault," Major Carter said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I know what the nish'ta can do to you, and believe me, you were *not* responsible."  
  
Giles whirled on the Air Force officer. "You can say that to me after I--"  
  
"I *said*," Carter snapped, iron in her voice, "it wasn't ... your fault."  
  
Willow looked up from Buffy, tears in her eyes. "So what now?"  
  
Riley kicked the bomb cart. "The bomb's not going any further unless we push it. Radio receiver's fried, and the wiring to the detonator squibs is totally burned away."  
  
"Well, is there another way to set the thing off?" Anya asked.  
  
"Sure," Carter said with a hint of bitterness. "Crack the valves manually and set off a spark. And pray that the Goa'uld aren't in charge of the afterlife."  
  
"What about Buffy?" Willow asked. "We've got to get her out of here."  
  
"We may have to leave her behind," Anya said.  
  
"What?" Willow shouted.  
  
"Absolutely not!" Giles snapped.  
  
"Well, can we drag her out of here and defend ourselves against the hordes at the same time? She's probably going to lose the leg anyway, and how many one-legged Slayers do you know of?"  
  
"Anyanka, if you think that even for a moment I'd consider--" Giles hissed.  
  
"Hey!" Carter yelled. "*Nobody* gets left behind!"  
  
"I'm only-" Anya sputtered.  
  
"I said *nobody*," Carter snapped, cutting her off. "End of discussion."  
  
Willow shook her head sadly, then stopped and stared at something in the next chamber. Giles followed her gaze and saw a glittering golden box, encrusted with hieroglyphs.  
  
Daniel saw it too. "I don't think that's such a good idea."  
  
"It healed me," Willow insisted. "I was shot in the chest and it cured me. It even took care of a couple of pimples on my nose. I ... I just don't know how it works."  
  
"Okay, physically, but what it does to you mentally..."  
  
"One use," Carter said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "One use won't do any harm. And we're going to need her."  
  
"She's just a kid, Sam."  
  
"No. She's something else." Sam moved over to Giles. "Can you carry her?"  
  
"Certainly," Giles said. "Willow, can you support her leg?"  
  
"Daniel, you get it started," Carter ordered. "Finn, help me cover up the bomb."  
  
With that, Giles, Willow, and Anya quickly carried Buffy to the sarcophagus; with every step he took, Giles noticed Buffy wincing in pain, and he felt his heart twist in his chest with every twitch in her face.  
  
Daniel touched a glyph on the sarcophagus, and its top rumbled open; Giles carefully laid his Slayer into the glowing opening. "Forgive me," he whispered.  
  
"For what?" Buffy asked weakly.  
  
"I did this. I nearly killed you."  
  
Buffy smiled with half her face. "Did I ever ask you ... to forgive me ... for stabbing you with that ... letter opener?"  
  
"Several times," Giles said softly.  
  
"Then I can forgive you for this," Buffy answered. "We'll ... call it even. Deal?"  
  
Giles grasped her hand, gave it a squeeze, and then let it go as the doors of the sarcophagus began to rumble closed. "Deal," he murmured.  
  
He heard a noise at the chamber door and saw Carter and Riley coming in, pushing the bomb cart. "Figured that they'd notice the thing out in the hallway," Riley said. "In here, maybe we can tuck it in a corner and figure out something."  
  
"We'd better let the others know," Carter said, thumbing her radio mike. "Colonel, we've got a problem here--"  
  
Riley grabbed at her equipment vest and yanked her aside, just in time to avoid the staff-weapon blast that had just been shot at her head. He fired his shotgun into the group of vampires that were charging in from the next chamber over; Carter regained her footing and let loose a long, ripping burst from her own weapon, incendiary bullets streaking almost like lasers and setting their targets alight as they hit.  
  
"Fall back!" Daniel shouted.  
  
"But Buffy--" Willow protested.  
  
"Right now she's the only one who's safe! Fall *back*!" Daniel repeated, firing blindly with his zat'nikatel.  
  
"Giles!" Riley called; when Giles turned to face him, Riley tossed him his shotgun, shrugging to unsling his rifle from his back. Giles grabbed the shotgun and fired, striking a vampire in the shoulder; he saw the spent shell spinning away and fired again, putting his next shot into the creature's chest and blasting it to powder.  
  
"Get the kids clear!" Riley hollered, slipping an enormous shell into the tube slung under his weapon. As Giles hustled Willow and Anya back, flanked by Carter and Daniel, Riley called out, "Willy Pete! Fire in the hole!" Then he fired, setting off a blinding white supernova among the attacking vampires.  
  
Through the white phosphor fire and burning ash, a monstrous form charged into the chamber. Giles glanced at it and then froze - praying it wasn't what he thought - but if it was - "Riley, get back!" he shouted.  
  
Riley jumped back, rolling out of the doorway - just as the creature took a deep breath and launched a stream of fire down the corridor.  
  
"What the hell *is* that?" Riley shouted as they ran.  
  
"Gornach," Giles gasped. "Sort of a fire elemental. Very rare, very dangerous, well-nigh impossible to kill."  
  
"And it's probably annoyed because it's not raining lava outside, so it wants to barbecue anything in sight. Namely, us," Anya added. "Isn't *this* fun."  
  
"You've encountered one of these before?" Daniel asked mildly.  
  
"Not until now," Anya snapped. "And if I go another thousand years before I see another, it'll be too soon." She kicked at a stone as she pounded down the hall. "Well, now what? The plan's obviously gone to hell on a one-way ticket; anybody have any new ideas?"  
  
"I guess we go to Plan B," Willow said, grabbing at an abandoned staff weapon. "We do this the Slayerettes' way."  
  
"And what's that?" Daniel said.  
  
"Make it up as we go," Willow answered.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"Bollocks," Spike hissed as he rolled over onto his back. "I forgot about tall, dark, and gruesome there."  
  
"Never mind that," O'Neill groaned as he struggled upright, then gave up and slumped back down to the ground. "What you *forgot* was to mention there was someone in here who could blow our cover."  
  
"Spike didn't know," Larry said, training a staff weapon on them. "I never met him until we dragged him in here after one of our sweeps." He shook his head. "You shouldn't have come, Xander."  
  
"Like I was gonna miss out on the end of the world?" Xander spat, holding his head and rocking slightly. "And what's with you wearing the bad guy's colors, Larry?"  
  
Larry frowned. "I owe him. Everything."  
  
"You stood up to the Mayor pretty good," Xander sighed.  
  
"Look what it got me," Larry said. "If it weren't for Kheper I'd be worm food."  
  
Tara looked from Xander and Larry to the others; Spike was on his feet unsteadily, covered by one of the staff-wielding vampires, but the two men in snake armor were still sprawled on the ground, holsters empty, weapons taken from them. Teal'c moved slightly, stilled as another vampire poked him with a staff weapon, and then opened his hands.  
  
"No, I guess you're right," Xander whispered. "Can't reason with a guy who's been whammied."  
  
Tara blinked. What had aroused Spike to rescue Willow the first time? What had broken the thrall?  
  
The chip. Electrical charge to the brain.  
  
A spiny-faced demon, freed of the influence of this mad would-be god by ... the zat. Electric charge.  
  
And now this man. Larry. Xander's friend, apparently, but that was overcome by the thrall. If only there were some way to deliver...  
  
*...lord of thunder, I beseech thee...*  
  
...an electrical...  
  
*bring forth the lightning and the thunder*  
  
...charge...  
  
*fulgus*  
  
*Willow's spell,* Tara thought. Dangerous, untried. But without it, death wouldn't be a risk, but a certainty. A last resort, Willow had called it, but if there were ever time for a last resort, now was it.  
  
What had she invoked? Oh, yeah. Tsul'kalu. The Cherokee god of thunder.  
  
"Tsul'kalu, lord of thunder," Tara whispered. "I beseech thee."  
  
Larry looked over at Teal'c and O'Neill, staying close to the vampire guards flanking him.  
  
"Bring forth the lightning and the thunder," Tara murmured, and she felt the energy begin to build within her, tingling, setting her to trembling. She slowly raised her hand, the right one, clad in the elaborate jeweled glove the Air Force had provided for her.  
  
Larry turned to face her.  
  
"*Fulgus*," Tara hissed, and her arm lit on fire.  
  
The lightning bolt tagged all three, Larry plus the two vampires, blasting them back, but in the same instant, Tara felt her hand begin to burn. She yelled in pain and tore off the glove, flinging away the suddenly superheated gauntlet.  
  
"Sweet," O'Neill rasped as he struggled to his feet. "Nice going."  
  
"Yeah," Xander said as he got on his hands and knees. "Nice shot."  
  
Larry was still on the ground, rocking gently; the two vampires got to their feet, levering themselves up with their staff weapons.  
  
Teal'c opened his helmet to face them. "Join us," he said. "I promise, you will have vengeance upon the false god who has humiliated you so."  
  
"Guys?" Xander said nervously. "Just because these vamps aren't on Kheper's leash any more doesn't mean--"  
  
The two vampires dropped the staff weapons and turned on Tara, brows furrowed, fangs gleaming.  
  
Then with a sickening *crack*, both of them were smashed aside, thrown into a wall by a single swing of a staff.  
  
Larry stood behind them, sweat trickling down the scarab brand on his forehead, an expression of pure fury in his eyes. He brought his staff back to vertical, glaring at the vampires. "Anybody got a stake?" he asked, his voice rough.  
  
Spike stood up. "Got better'n that," he said; he dug into a pocket of his overcoat, came up with a zat, and swiftly pumped three shots into each vampire as they struggled to their feet. "Haven't you wankers ever heard of searching a prisoner?" he scolded the empty ground where the vampires had been.  
  
"Prisoners are in the holding pen," Larry said. "Three chambers down that corridor and hang a left; you can't miss it. I'll stall Kheper for as long as I can; hopefully you can make it out one or the other of the exits."  
  
O'Neill leaned against a wall. "Already ahead of you there," he said, touching a control and folding the snake-head helmet back into his collar. He tapped his earpiece, then the throat mike. "Carter, what's your status?"  
  
Even in the bad light of the chamber, Tara could see his face turn pale as he heard the answer. "Oh, *hell*. Hang on, Carter!" he snapped as he grabbed a staff weapon.  
  
"What?" Tara asked.  
  
"They're pinned down. The jumbo-sized whatsit apparently is laying down fire, has 'em cut off from the exits."  
  
Teal'c grabbed a staff weapon for himself, and snatched the zats from where they'd been sequestered, handing one to the Colonel while slipping the other into his sleeve holster.  
  
O'Neill triggered the zat open, then closed, stuffing it into the pouch on his left sleeve. "Teal'c, you're with me." He stared hard at Spike. "Blondie. Make sure they get out all right."  
  
"Didn't we already talk about how we're not getting left behind?" Xander snapped.  
  
O'Neill looked at Xander, slowly rubbing his forehead, wiping off the oval that had been inked on his head in magic marker. "You two did good, kid. I mean *real* good. Your job's done, okay?"  
  
"Not with half of us pinned down somewhere in this maze, it's not!"  
  
"Xander," Jack said. "You got us in, you bought us as much time as you could. Look ... they got a saying in my job. Until you drop the bombs, you're flying for your country; once the bombs are gone, you're flying for yourself." He put a hand on Xander's shoulder. "Teal'c and me, we've got it from here. You and Tara, your job now is to get outta here alive. You," he continued, pointing at Spike. "You watch out for them, you hear me?"  
  
Spike looked like he was about to say something nasty, then bit it back. "Right," he finally said, gripping his zat.  
  
Larry grabbed his staff weapon and took one long step to follow the soldiers when-  
  
"Larry, this way's out," Xander snapped.  
  
"I can't leave, Xander."  
  
"Like hell you can't, man--"  
  
Larry cut him off. "I'll help, Xander. I'll help your friends get out okay, but I *have* to stay."  
  
"Staying's not an option, Larry."  
  
"*Leaving* isn't an option, Harris. I can't explain; you're just going to have to trust me."  
  
"Larry--"  
  
"*Go*!" Larry hissed, turning to follow Teal'c and O'Neill.  
  
"Come on, Harris," Spike snapped, grabbing Xander's arm with one hand and Tara's with the other.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"Hey, isn't the exit the other way?" Anya called as she, Willow, Daniel, and Giles rolled into an anteroom, Carter and Riley following close behind.  
  
"I do believe you're right," Giles answered dryly. "Unfortunately, in case you had forgotten, so is the fire-breathing Gornach."  
  
"Well, why don't we just kill it?" was the response. "You said 'well-nigh' unstoppable; that means that there's some really difficult way of killing it, right?"  
  
"Well, yes. There was one loose near the Devonshire moors during the Blitz; the Watchers' Council convinced the RAF to send a plane to bomb it."  
  
"That killed it, right?"  
  
"Stunned it. They finally dropped a blockbuster on it."  
  
Carter groaned. "So what you're saying is that nothing we've got will work."  
  
"Perhaps if you have more plastique?"  
  
"Used all the C4 on the doorways," Riley said, shaking his head. "We didn't pack any HE or frag grenades, just incendiaries."  
  
"Staff weapons are probably useless, and we can't get a clear shot with the zats," Carter added. "I'm open to suggestions. Even dumb ones."  
  
"I don't suppose we could offer it a breath mint?" Daniel asked mildly. Five pairs of eyes stared him down.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
This wasn't the worst plan they'd ever had, Xander mused as the three of them pounded down the hallway towards the front exit to the sewers, but it had to be in the top five.   
  
What was wrong with it? They were running *away* from the danger that still threatened Buffy, Willow, Riley, and Anya, for one; for another, they were leaving the rescue in the hands of government operatives, who Xander was pretty sure wouldn't be able to find the ground if they were thrown out of a plane; third, just to show how inept they were, they'd left Xander and Tara's defense in the hands of a vampire. Bad enough, that; worse still that it had to be Spike.  
  
He could hear footsteps behind him, getting closer. He glanced at Tara and Spike; Spike was loping along like a marathoner, but Tara was starting to gasp for breath. If they ran any harder, he might have to tell Spike to carry Tara. He'd never be able to carry Tara to safety himself, not and still outrun the vampires.  
  
They were almost to the exit; thirty feet, maybe less.  
  
Then a dull silver sphere sailed over their heads, rolling to a stop at the edge of the outer doorway.  
  
Spike skidded to a stop, catching Xander and Tara by the wrists, yanking them back so hard they yelped in pain as they went flying in the other direction.  
  
"What the--" Xander began to holler, but the curse he was about to spit out was drowned out by a deafening explosion.  
  
Spike let them go so quickly that they both went sprawling to the ground, grabbing his bug-zapper and opening it and firing in one smooth move, sending their pursuers scattering. Xander and Tara hit the ground barely a moment before the ceiling over the exit passage groaned and collapsed behind them, throwing up dust, leaving the two humans coughing and half-blinded.  
  
Xander wasn't sure what was more disorienting: the fact that they'd come within a hairsbreadth of getting blown sky-high, the unsettling fact that their way out was now buried under about forty tons of rubble, or the mind-bending fact that Spike - *Spike, for crissakes* - had just saved their skins.  
  
"Well, there's *that* escape route gone balls-up," Spike said with a grimace.  
  
"Other way, I guess," Xander muttered as he struggled back upright,   
  
They turned towards the center of the complex, Spike leading the way with his weapon up and ready.  
  
"Putting a whole lotta effort into saving us," Xander muttered as Spike leaned around a corner. "What gives, Evil Dead?"  
  
"I'm putting a lot of effort into saving *me*, monkey boy. You and the witch are just along for the ride."  
  
"Right. Just don't forget what Buffy'll do to you if you leave us here to die."  
  
"Part and parcel of self-preservation, mate," Spike snapped, shooting another electric bolt as one of the would-be god's minions poked a head around a corner.  
  
"Hey, how can you tell if that zat gun's about to run out of ... well ... run out of zat?"  
  
Spike shrugged. "Buggered if I know."  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
It was deja vu all over again, O'Neill figured.  
  
They were up to their eyeballs in trouble, chasing down a snake-head who had apparently taken up a personal grudge against Stargate Recon Team One. And once again, they had an uncertain ally in a First Prime who had opted out of the employment contract.  
  
Of course, this time, the man leading them through the citadel of the would-be god hadn't volunteered for the job or the gold tattoo in the first place.  
  
"Carter?" he barked into the radio.  
  
"Sir, we're still pinned down," she responded. "The thing's got the exit corridor blocked and we haven't got anything to dislodge it."  
  
"Okay, we're on the way. We'll think of something." O'Neill gritted his teeth and looked at Larry. "You got any ideas for how to stop that thing?"  
  
"Torak?" Larry said. "All I know is he's big, he's tough, he's not incredibly smart, and he breathes fire. Look, I'm not an expert like Buffy or Mr. Giles. Didn't know anything about any of this until ... what, a year ago? Graduation. That's when I found out that the biggest danger on the streets wasn't gangbangers on PCP."  
  
They rolled into the next chamber, looking at the fixtures on the walls, the enormous golden box between two of the doorways, the intricate ring on the floor, and off to the side, a squat shape under a G.I. camouflage net. "Through that door," Larry said. "Right out the corridor, then you get to the back antechamber, probably where Torak's camped out. Past that you've got access to the sewers and the surface. Lets out right near the old high school."  
  
"Okay," O'Neill said. "So ... all we need to do is get past whatshisname."  
  
"Perhaps your status may be used to our advantage," Teal'c offered.  
  
"Status?"  
  
"You know, First Prime?" O'Neill clarified.  
  
Larry grimaced, the dull light of the chamber glinting off his scarab brand. "Worth a try." He leaned out the far doorway and hollered, "Torak! Stand down! Stand down!"  
  
The response from the hallway was a gout of flame; Teal'c grabbed Larry's arm and yanked him back, in time to protect his body from the flames, but too late to get his robes out of the way. Larry hissed when he saw the flames, rolled and quickly shed the cloak, tossed it into a corner where it slowly smoldered, far away from anything else.  
  
"So much ... for ... that..." O'Neill said, his voice trailing off as he heard a rumbling from the golden box. "Oh, crap."  
  
The sarcophagus.  
  
Something was in the sarcophagus, about to come out, and the safe money said that anything coming out of one of those things was not likely to be good.  
  
He raised his staff weapon to the sarcophagus as the top opened up slowly, only to whirl around as Teal'c shouted, "O'Neill!"  
  
He saw it then - three, no, four bloodsuckers charging down the hallway. Teal'c triggered off a blast from his staff weapon; O'Neill shot down the same corridor, hitting targets but not slowing them down--  
  
--but something else did. Not the explosive *pop* of the staff weapon, or the shrill scream of a zat, but the hissing whistle of an arrow. Followed by another. And another. And a fourth, quicker than the mind could process. And before he could think to ask who'd be shooting arrows in the chamber, the four vampires were gone with the wind, nothing more than hazy ashes in the corridor.  
  
He turned back to the sarcophagus, staff leveled, to see Buffy Summers standing up, longbow raised, arrow notched.  
  
"Nice shooting," O'Neill said conversationally.  
  
"Comes with the job," Buffy cracked, jumping out of the sarchopagus. O'Neill noted that the right leg of her pants was scorched, the knee exposed, but as she landed, she had a spring in her step that made his knees wince in envy.  
  
She looked around. "So what'd I miss ... *Larry*?" she asked, shocked.  
  
"Lookin' good, Buffy," Larry cracked.  
  
"Thanks, but ... at graduation..."  
  
"Kheper. He put me in the box."  
  
"Okay, but what about the..." Buffy stammered, putting a hand to her forehead.  
  
Larry echoed her motion, touching the brand. "He hit me with the gas."  
  
"Bug-zapper?"  
  
Larry blinked. "Oh, the zat? No, Xander's girlfriend. Hit me with a thunderbolt, it felt like."  
  
"Willow's girlfriend, not Xander's."  
  
"Willow? Wait, you mean ... never mind," Larry said, frowning.  
  
"So you busting out?" Buffy asked quickly.  
  
"Helping you guys."  
  
"Cool. So how do we get out? And what about the bomb?"  
  
O'Neill pulled the radio detonator from beneath his costume. "Once we get clear, we just set it off."  
  
"Uh, Colonel..." Buffy said, then took a breath. "Giles kinda shot it with a boom-stick when he was whammied."  
  
O'Neill cringed. "D'oh," he said under his breath. "Teal'c, let's have a look."  
  
It took two seconds to uncover the bomb and only twenty seconds more to diagnose the problem. "Radio's dead. Wiring to the detonators is torched away. Looks like the valve release is still okay, but there's no way to set it off remotely or blow it at the right time."  
  
Larry blinked. "You were going for the whole compound?"  
  
"Pretty much," O'Neill answered. "'Course, now we have to improvise."  
  
Larry looked at the bomb for a long moment, then whirled as footsteps pounded down the hallway from the direction of the front exit. O'Neill followed his gaze, bringing up the staff weapon, but it wasn't foes coming towards them, it was...  
  
"For crying out loud, I thought I told you to get the hell out!" O'Neill hollered.  
  
"Love to, mate. I'm not cut out for this hero business. I'm also not cut out for drilling through a hundred tons of rubbish."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Grenade," Xander explained. "Collapsed the front exit. Nearly dropped the ceiling on us. Something tells me these guys don't like us."  
  
"Okay," Buffy said. "Still the other exit, right?"  
  
O'Neill opened his mouth to chastise her, but then remembered she hadn't been around for that discussion. "I think there's a dragon guarding it," he said instead.  
  
"Gornach," Spike growled. "That'll be a tough nut to crack."  
  
"You know how to kill one of those?" O'Neill asked, suddenly interested.  
  
"Me and Drusilla ran across one in France back before the Great War," Spike said. "That's World War One for those who weren't around before the Atomic Age. The thing got on our trail, and Dru tried to kill it by dropping a safe on its head from a first-story balcony."  
  
"That killed it?"  
  
"No, but it left it woozy enough that I was able to bait it in front of the freight train which *did* kill it."  
  
"Great. So we gotta do a Looney Tunes attack?" Buffy snapped. "Hate to break it to you, but we don't have a safe, a balcony, or a freight train handy."  
  
"I'm not saying what we've got will do the job," Spike shot back. "They asked if I knew how, and that's the only way I know."  
  
"I've got an idea," Xander said suddenly. "I'm gonna need one of those zap guns."  
  
"Hold on just a--" O'Neill began to protest, but Teal'c and Larry were both holding out zats to the kid by then.  
  
Xander grabbed both. "Three shots disintegrate, right?"  
  
"That is correct," Teal'c answered.  
  
"Hang on," O'Neill snapped. "Don't do something stupid!"  
  
"We've been trying to play this smart from the beginning," Xander said just as heatedly. "Every smart move we make, things just keep getting worse. I say it's time to try something stupid."  
  
"What makes you think you won't get killed?"  
  
"Hey, if I kept worrying about whether saving the world was gonna get me killed, I'd be dead or in Cleveland by now." He held up the zats, touched the side studs, and both snapped open. "Relax. I saw this in a movie once."  
  
"Xander, wait!" Buffy shouted, but he was already rolling out the door and charging down the hallway.  
  
"Crap," she spat, nocking an arrow and sprinting after him.  
  
The rest of the group spared a split second to look at one another, then grabbed whatever weapons were close at hand and barreled after them.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"Maybe we could try a bank shot with one of the grenades?" Anya said. "You know, distract it?"  
  
"Wish we had more water," Willow sighed, looking at Anya's squirt gun.  
  
Carter was tuning them out, flexing her hands on the grip and magazine of her MP-5, nervously thumbing the burst switch from single-shot to three-round to full-auto and back. The Colonel should have called, should have come up with some idea.  
  
She had just put her hand to the radio when she saw Xander Harris sprinting down the hall towards the antechamber.  
  
"Holy Hannah!" she said before she could even process it. "Xander, *no*!"  
  
She rolled out of the doorway and rushed after him, only to nearly collide with Buffy; they raced into the opening, weapons up.  
  
Just in time to see Xander hurling himself sideways, drawing the creature's attention to himself ... and bringing up his arms, a zat'nikatel in each hand, blazing away.  
  
The first shots went wide, scoring the walls, but he aimed the pistols like they were fire hoses, walking the shots into the monster even as it drew in a breath. First one shot hit the massive demon, then another, and the creature staggered. A third shot hit -- the creature glowed blue and shimmered -- a fourth shot struck home, then a fifth, a sixth, and then more than any of them could count--  
  
--and as Xander smashed into the ground on his side, the ferocious demon exploded into a fireball that reached halfway to Xander before collapsing in on itself, leaving nothing behind but electrical sparks dancing across the holes gouged in the back wall. Xander gave an agonized grunt as the zats skittered away across the floor.  
  
"*Ow*," he moaned. "Chow Yun-Fat never wiped out a shoulder doing that."  
  
"Two words, Xander," Buffy said as she hauled him to his feet. "Stunt double."  
  
"I thought he did his own stunts!"  
  
Carter whipped her gun around as she checked the exits from the antechamber as the rest of the motley strike team came charging in. "That was Jackie Chan, not Chow Yun-Fat, and he's got the fractured skull to prove it -- DOWN!" she shouted as something moved in the hallway.  
  
She and Riley each fired a burst of tracer rounds, catching more of the unholy footsoldiers on fire, but then another figure strode up behind them, raising an arm and making the air pulse and shimmer - and smash into the group like a brick wall.  
  
Everyone scattered as Kheper stalked into the antechamber, eyes flashing. "Do you think you can stop me?" he growled, and his voice was even harsher than before. "Do you think your pathetic flailing can save this miserable world?"  
  
Willow struggled to her feet, clutching a staff for balance. "You tried to kill us," she seethed, her own voice low and dangerous. "You couldn't stand that the others wouldn't let you into their little club, so you're getting your revenge by destroying the world?"  
  
"Ah, Willow. How little you understand," Kheper said mockingly.  
  
"I understand this," Willow countered. "What goes around, comes around. You killed me, so-"  
  
She didn't finish the sentence, instead snapping up the staff weapon and shooting a bolt right into Kheper's chest. He staggered, stumbled, and fell.  
  
Willow took a deep breath, panted several times, then sank to her knees, the staff dropping from her fingers.  
  
"Sweetie," Tara said, taking a step to Willow--  
  
--when suddenly Kheper was back on his feet, right in front of Willow, hand splayed and pouring bright energy into her forehead.  
  
Carter took a step to one side and sighted down her MP-5 at Kheper's forehead, while Buffy drew back an arrow.  
  
Carter's three-round burst was aimed right at Kheper's forehead, burning phosphor tracing a line from the gun to a point between the Goa'uld's eyes; Buffy's shot was off to the side but aimed right at his heart.  
  
None of the shots made it. The bullets bounced off a force shield, spinning crazily, tracing wobbly arcs to odd corners of the room; the arrow simply shattered.  
  
Then Anya raised her water cannon. Kheper saw it and laughed. "Do you think to harm me with that ... toy?"  
  
Anya didn't say a word, just pulled the trigger and shot a stream of water into Kheper's chest.  
  
Kheper screamed, hands clawing at his body, giving Buffy just enough time to pull Willow out of the way. Then, eyes flashing, the Goa'uld sent another shockwave Anya's way.  
  
Anya smashed into the wall, cannon caught between her body and the rocks; Carter caught her before she could collapse. Anya frantically pumped the slide, charging her weapon again, and pulled the trigger once more; nothing came out but a puff of mist.  
  
Carter looked down. "You cracked your reserve tank."  
  
Anya looked at where Carter had indicated, at the puddle of water at their feet, soaking through their clothes. She threw down the useless weapon and stared daggers at Kheper. "*Yob tvoyu mat'*!" she screamed at him.  
  
"What was that?" Carter asked under her breath as they inched back.  
  
"Something I heard during the Russian Revolution. You don't want to know," Anya whispered back.  
  
Kheper took two steps closer before Buffy held up her hand, and then he hissed, eyes flashing white.  
  
No, not white. Eyes flashing *red*, Carter realized with shock.  
  
He wasn't just frowning, either; his brows were furrowed, unnaturally so, and when he breathed out in frustration, backing up, he showed a nasty set of teeth ... no, *fangs*.  
  
Buffy kept her hand raised, advancing on the ... vampire. "That's how you were going to survive the apocalypse, huh?" she said, dangling a cross on a chain before her, backing Kheper up into the hallway. "I don't know if that thing in your head ever had a soul, but if it did, or it does, I've got one word of advice.  
  
"Pray."  
  
She had a stake in her other hand, and as she took another step forward, he fled.  
  
"So that's it?" Xander asked.  
  
"Blow the front door," Buffy said, all business now. "We seal him in and then maybe you can call up a plane to drop something here. Maybe the shock will set off the bomb."  
  
"We could try a Durandal," Carter mused. "Anti-runway bomb, should dig in deep enough that if they hit the sarcophagus room, it'd react with the naquada and..."  
  
"Carter!" O'Neill snapped. "Don't talk about it. Make it happen once we're out."  
  
"Front door's already gone," Xander said. "This is the last way out."  
  
"So we close it behind us," Buffy said. "I'd say it's showtime."  
  
"Okay," Xander said. "Once we do this, we can worry about how to explain Larry..."  
  
"Larry?" Willow asked, puzzled. "Wait, Kheper dug up Larry's grave? Larry's down here?"  
  
"Duh," Xander said sweetly. "He's right ... here..."  
  
Except he wasn't.  
  
"Where'd he go?" Xander asked. "Larry!" he bellowed.  
  
"We don't have time," O'Neill said.  
  
"The hell we don't! I'm not leaving him behind!"  
  
"And if they double back and cut us off again? We're holding the exit now; we may not be if we get into the maze again!"  
  
"I didn't say 'we', Colonel, sir, I said 'I'! Look, you guys hold the hallway. I'll be back as soon as I find him."  
  
"Xander, we can't--" O'Neill started.  
  
"Don't be a bloody fool," Spike snapped.  
  
"Xander, it's too dangerous," Buffy pleaded.  
  
Then, through the din, Daniel spoke up. "Nobody gets left behind, right?"  
  
Maybe it was the mild tone of his voice; maybe it was the glint of light off his glasses; maybe it was just his posture, but everyone stopped cold. "We didn't leave Teal'c behind that first time; we never gave up on Carter with Jolinar, and Carter and Teal'c never gave up hope of getting you back from Edora, remember?"  
  
O'Neill paused a moment. "Teal'c, you're with Harris. Keep him safe."  
  
Teal'c nodded, gathering up one of the fallen zats from the floor.  
  
"Hey, Xander," Riley called, pulling his radio from his vest and tossing it to Xander. "Holler when you've got him, okay?"  
  
"We'll hold the passageway as long as we can," Buffy said.  
  
"Gotcha," Xander said, grabbing the other zat as he strode up the hallway.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
Larry looked around the sarcophagus chamber, fingering the golden box, touching a toe against the ring engraved in the floor. Then he slowly, carefully, pulled the netting from the one device Kheper hadn't brought into the chamber.  
  
He touched the shattered control panel lightly, traced wires - not electrical conductors, but almost like guitar strings, it seemed - to a valve on the end of each of the tanks strapped to the ungainly cart.  
  
He inspected the valves, closely, carefully, and then nodded, satisfied.  
  
That was when Xander burst into the room, the huge dark man in tow. "Come on, Larry. We've gotta get out of here."  
  
Larry sighed. "I can't go, Xander."  
  
"Whaddaya mean you can't go? Larry, it's a second chance. How many of those do you get?"  
  
"It's not a second chance, Xander. It's borrowed time."  
  
Xander blinked. "Huh?"  
  
"Remember Caroline Everett?"  
  
"She was the one who made that bust of Oz in art class, right?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Xander nodded. "She was another one who didn't make it past graduation. Lemme guess. Kheper?"  
  
"Yep," Larry said bitterly. "Only she wasn't a warrior. She was a test."  
  
Xander stared uncomprehendingly.  
  
"Kheper wanted to see what the sarcophagus would do against a vampire bite," Larry explained softly. "So he had one of his pet vamps - one of the early ones - drain her, force her to drink his blood ... and then he put her into the sarcophagus." He took a slow breath.  
  
"It worked fine for a couple of days," he continued. "Then, one night, she went to sleep ... and when she woke up, she had fangs and a taste for blood."  
  
"Wait, so you're saying...?" Then Xander got it. "Oh, God. God, Larry, you're not telling me..."  
  
"I don't go in that box every day, then one day soon I'm gonna wake up and I won't be able to see myself in the mirror to shave," Larry said. "That box is the only thing keeping me alive, and I can feel it stripping a piece of me away every time I go in it. Sooner or later ... I'm gonna hit a point of no return." He laughed. "That's assuming I can keep going in the box. 'Course, you blow this place up, that's not an option any more."  
  
"Look, maybe we can get the sarcophagus out?" Xander asked, looking at his companion. The big man just shook his head.  
  
"I'm already dead, Xander," Larry said sadly. "I've just been on borrowed time, that's all. And I'm not going back to my folks wondering if one day I'm gonna wake up and kill them all and enjoy it."  
  
"Come on, Larry, don't talk like that--"  
  
"Let him, Xander Harris," the other man said. "Sometimes, the only choice left us is the manner in which we die."  
  
Larry nodded slowly. "What he said." He smiled. "We got the Mayor, didn't we?"  
  
Xander took a shuddering breath. "Yeah, Larry. Yes, we did."  
  
"There's worse ways to go," Larry continued. "No need to tell everyone that I ended up like this, huh? Branded?"  
  
"I ... I guess not."  
  
Larry nodded again. "Guess it's settled then. You guys get out ... and I'll worry about the rest." He paused a moment. "Hey, Xander?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"That day, junior year ... when you confronted me and I finally came out ... what did you think I was?"  
  
Xander laughed, but Larry could see it was painful. "Werewolf."  
  
"Werewolf?"  
  
"Yeah," Xander said, smiling ruefully. "Turns out we were barking up the wrong tree."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"Yeah. Turns out it was Oz."  
  
Larry blinked at that. "Oz, huh? Is it just me or does that make a whole lotta sense somehow?"  
  
"I dunno," Xander said. "Larry, are you sure...?"  
  
"I'm sure, Xander," Larry said sadly. "I'm sure. Okay, you guys just stand in the middle of that ring a moment, okay?"  
  
They did as he asked, and he went over to a crystal in the wall. "You can tell the others when you're clear, I take it?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Okay," Larry said, nodding. "Once you're clear, tell them you're okay and then run for the treeline."  
  
"Treeline?"  
  
"Trust me," Larry said with a smile. He stepped up and offered his hand to Xander. Xander shook it, then wrapped Larry in a hug.  
  
"Larry, you know I'm straight, right?"  
  
"Yeah. Bummer," Larry said with a sardonic laugh. "Listen ... about the lunch money ... I'm gonna have to owe you, okay?"  
  
Xander disengaged from the embrace. "You don't owe me anything, Larry."  
  
"Be safe, Xander," Larry said, walking back and touching the stud on the wall.  
  
A set of rings leaped out of the floor, rising to encircle Xander and the other man; then with a flash of light, they were gone.  
  
Larry stood for a moment, and then off in the distance, he heard the clatter of gunfire, some dull thumps, and then a concussion that rocked the walls and echoed through the chamber.  
  
It was time.  
  
He took a deep breath and bellowed, "KHEPER!"  
  
As if by magic, the man calling himself the Scarab appeared. "So the betrayal is complete," he growled.  
  
"Oh yeah. Right from the moment you started this, bug man."  
  
"I would have made you a god."  
  
"You would have left me for dead."  
  
"What makes you think that?"  
  
"Gut feeling," Larry spat. He strode over to the bomb and grabbed his staff weapon. "You ever heard the phrase 'freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose'?"  
  
Kheper blinked, then touched a stud on his gauntlet, and the shimmering force field enveloped him.  
  
"I'm dead if I stay," Larry said coldly. "And I'm dead if I go. I understand that now. You know what that means?"  
  
"It means that you will die," Kheper answered.  
  
"No, you son of a bitch," Larry said, yanking at the wires on the bomb, listening to the valves pop open and gas hiss out.  
  
He leveled his open staff at the Scarab of Ra. "It means that I am *free*."  
  
Kheper's eyes went wide, and he slammed his hand down on his gauntlet.  
  
Larry cursed to himself for trying to get in the last word, hoping he hadn't left it too late, squeezing the trigger on the staff, watching the rings leap up, the light envelop his would-be master even as the staff--  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
The light faded and Xander immediately hit the switch on the radio. "We're clear! We're clear! Blow the exit and *get clear*!"  
  
"Clear? How?" O'Neill's voice came back.  
  
"A ring transporter," Teal'c said, his voice no longer in that annoyingly calm tone. "We are on the surface; you must seal the exits and evacuate! Do not argue!"  
  
Xander was running like a madman for the treeline, trying to get away, as far away as he could. "How far is far enough?" he asked, gasping.  
  
"I am uncertain! The sarcohpagus contains materials which may magnify the explosion!"  
  
They kept running; Xander felt the ground buck under him as he got closer to the trees. "Was that it?"  
  
"I doubt very much that it was!"  
  
"Crap, how powerful *is* this thing?"  
  
"As I said, I am uncertain," Teal'c said. "Do not talk; save your energy for running!"  
  
They were almost to the treeline when the entire landscape was lit up as though there were an arc-light on two feet behind them; he felt rather than heard Teal'c get behind him, grab him in a bear hug, keeping his larger body between Xander's and the light.  
  
Xander looked back and faltered, stumbling as he saw the statue of Mayor Wilkins shoot skyward, but then the air turned to brick and smashed right into--  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"We're clear! We're clear! Blow the exit and *get clear*!" Xander hollered over the radio.  
  
O'Neill blinked. "Clear? How?"  
  
"A ring transporter," Tank's voice came through. "We are on the surface; you must seal the exits and evacuate! Do not argue!"  
  
"You heard him; everyone fall back!" O'Neill ordered. Carter tossed him her machine gun and unstrapped her shotgun.  
  
"Spike, make sure Willow, Tara, and Anya get out okay," Buffy snapped.  
  
"Right, Slayer."  
  
"Daniel, Finn, take point. Carter and I have the rearguard," O'Neill ordered.  
  
As if they could sense the humans withdrawing, a flock of creatures poured into the antechamber. O'Neill took aim with the machine gun and opened fire, yellow streaks tagging the vampires, catching them on fire; Carter fired more slowly with her shotgun, aiming for the hearts of their pursuers.  
  
O'Neill pulled the trigger once more, and Buffy heard him curse as the bolt locked open; he pulled the magazine, looked at it, then tossed the entire weapon aside. "Finn! How you loaded?"  
  
"One mag left and one Willy Pete!"  
  
"Give it over! Use your zat!"  
  
Riley tossed O'Neill his rifle; the Colonel caught it, grabbed the magazine, and pulled the trigger in front of it, shooting a grenade into the antechamber.  
  
As the phosphor consumed the hunters, the prey ran like madmen into the sewer pipe, firing all the way, dropping weapons as their ammunition was exhausted, until they finally were clear of Kheper's compound and into the Sunnydale sewer system proper.  
  
O'Neill took out another radio device, hollered, "Fire in the hole!" and pushed the button. The blast from the passageway they'd just left was deafening, and they could see the roof collapse through the dust.  
  
They kept running; Buffy was pondering whether she'd have to pick up Willow and carry her, when suddenly Tara skidded to a stop, grabbing Willow's hand. "We'll never make it! Willow, the shield spell!"  
  
"What?" Buffy blurted.  
  
Willow grabbed Tara's hand and shouted, "Everyone get down!"  
  
Tara raised her hand to the buried door -- the hand that wasn't gripping Willow's -- and shouted, "Aegis!"  
  
Willow raised her free hand and called out, "Contego!"  
  
Buffy saw everybody hitting the ground, and dove down to follow them, about to call to Willow and Tara to get down themselves, when suddenly an overpowering burst of light and noise and fire burst through the sealed door, vaporizing the rubble, racing for them, and in front of Willow's and Tara's hands the air shimmered silver even as the wave of fire rolled towards--  
  
end part twelve 


	13. The Whites of Their Eyes

(Standard disclaimers in Part 1.)  
  
---  
  
part thirteen  
  
In the dark, Buffy heard a deep groan. "Aagh. Everybody who's not dead or unconscious, sound off," Colonel O'Neill rasped.  
  
"I'm alive," Buffy answered. "Don't know how, but I'm alive. Yay Slayer strength," she continued wearily.  
  
"I'm still here," Willow answered weakly.  
  
"Me ... me too," Tara's voice wavered.  
  
"Riley? Giles? Anya?" Buffy asked.  
  
"Banged up but I'll live."  
  
"I'm conscious. Miracle of miracles."  
  
"I think my clothes are ruined."  
  
That had to be Anya, Buffy thought with a smile. "That's why I didn't wear my prom dress, Anya."  
  
"Carter? Daniel?" O'Neill asked.  
  
"I'm okay, Colonel. Kinda rattled, but nothing's broken."  
  
"Can't find my glasses, Jack, but other than that ... wait, there they are."  
  
"Just in case any of you blokes were wondering, I'm still here."  
  
"Oh, yay. The evil vampire gets to walk another day," Buffy groused.  
  
"You know, Slayer, if it weren't for me then Xander and Tara would be flattened under the front entrance right now."  
  
"Doesn't make up for trying to kill Willow and Xander year before last. Or trying to kill me in broad daylight last fall. Or selling us all out to Adam a couple of--"  
  
"Knock it off!" O'Neill snapped, flicking on a flashlight. "Everybody's accounted for?" he asked pointedly, shining the light around the sewer pipe, catching dust motes in the beam.  
  
"Everyone except Xander," Anya groused.  
  
"And Teal'c," Daniel said, more kindly.  
  
"Okay," O'Neill said, touching his throat mike. "Teal'c, this is O'Neill, are you there?  
  
"I am ... alive," Teal'c responded over the radio. "As is Xander Harris."  
  
"We're heading for the ... oops. So much for using the Hummer to get you guys up and out."  
  
"Oops?" O'Neill said incredulously.  
  
"Not 'oops' as in 'screwed up'," Xander continued quickly. "More like 'oops' as in 'didn't realize that your invincible Army truck was gonna land on its roof'."  
  
Carter sighed as she got up, turned on her own flashlight, and started looking for exits to the surface. "We might have miscalculated the blast a bit."  
  
"Ya think?" O'Neill asked, struggling back upright.  
  
"The sarcophagus," Carter mused. "It must have magnified the effect."  
  
"Carter, if you start calculating the explosive force and the compression ratios and the heatsink qualities of naquada, I am going to *shoot* you."  
  
"Hammond'll court-martial you," Carter responded, not unkindly.  
  
"Fine, then. I'll shoot myself. No court-martial, no worries about finding a new team member, and maybe I'll get some peace and quiet."  
  
"Look, let's just get to the surface, okay?" Buffy said sharply. "This may be Sunnydale, but someone's bound to have noticed *that*," she said, jerking a thumb back towards the blast zone.  
  
O'Neill thumbed his radio. "Teal'c, any chance you guys can get the Humvee upright and lower the winch rope down one of the manholes?"  
  
"I will ... make the attempt."  
  
"No, he won't," Xander's voice came through. "He's pretty banged up."  
  
"I am not seriously injured."  
  
"No, you just busted five ribs, Tank. You think I'm gonna let you bench-press a car like that?"  
  
"Found a ladder," Buffy called. "Anyone who can't climb?"  
  
"Uh ... Buffy?" Tara said. "Willow's ... Willow ... she's out."  
  
Willow moaned. "The ... the shield spell. Took too much out of me," she whispered.  
  
"Probably because you got hit by the ribbon device," Daniel said. "Want me to carry her?"  
  
"Spike. Take Willow," Buffy commanded. "And *don't hurt her*."  
  
"Spike, do this. Spike, do that. Spike, we need your help to save the world, and by the way, that's a lovely porter's hat you're wearing," Spike groused, but he picked Willow up gently and carried her to the ladder.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
"So much for plausible deniability," O'Neill sighed when he looked out at Richard Wilkins Memorial Park, and beheld the hundred-foot-wide crater where Carter had sworn a statue once stood. "Nobody's gonna believe a leaky gas main did this."  
  
"Don't be so sure," Buffy said as she paced on the charred grass. "Snyder managed to explain away a full-blown vampire attack on Parent-Teacher Night as gang activity. People don't *want* to believe this town's sitting on the mouth of Hell, so they'll jump at any expanation that comes by. That's not gonna be half as difficult as explaining how Larry wound up being all ... well, not dead."  
  
"Buffy," Xander said softly.  
  
"Where is Larry anyway?"  
  
"Buffy ... he never made it out."  
  
Buffy opened her mouth, took a breath, then closed it without making a sound, slowly sinking back down to the ground near where the others sat or lay down in various states of fatigue or pain.  
  
Teal'c walked over, and if Buffy noticed a slight twitch in his face when his foot touched the ground, she didn't mention it. "The Goa'uld left him with the hardest of choices," he explained. "Had I faced the same circumstance ... I would have made the same choice. As would O'Neill."  
  
"Teal'c, it's not the same thing," O'Neill said.  
  
"If you were offered one chance to end the threat of the Goa'uld forever, and told that you could protect your world until the end of time, but you would have to sacrifice your life to do so, otherwise the Tau'ri would be doomed, would you refuse?"  
  
O'Neill got to his feet, leaning on a tree at the edge of the woods by the park. "Okay, when you put it that way, I suppose--"  
  
He never finished the sentence.  
  
Instead, he yelled in pain, arching his back, grabbing at the figure that had crept up behind him, sinking fangs into his neck.  
  
Buffy leapt to her feet, grabbing her bow and the last arrow from her quiver, drawing it back, praying that the time she'd spent with Giles practicing would hold true.  
  
Next to her, Carter rolled upright and pulled her hand from her fatigues' thigh pocket, clad in a gauntlet like the ones Xander and Tara had worn - like the device Kheper had worn on his hand ... was wearing on the hand that gripped O'Neill while his fangs drove into the Colonel's neck.  
  
Buffy whispered a prayer and let her arrow loose, watching it whistle past O'Neill's neck and tear right through the enemy's jaw, causing him to gasp in pain and let up the bite.  
  
O'Neill dropped like a stone, rolling away, and even as Kheper brought up his gauntlet, Carter threw her hand forward -- and the air rippled and threw Kheper back, smashing him into a tree. He staggered and collapsed, and Carter ran up to him, spread her hand again, and with a loud *crunch*, he was driven into the ground like a cannonball had been dropped on him.  
  
Carter looked at the tableau, slowly slipped the glove off her hand, and turned to look at the Colonel--  
  
--when Kheper's eyes flashed red again, his hand snapped up, and Buffy felt the air slam into her like a sledgehammer, knocking her on her back ... and she'd just been at the edge of the effect. Carter, taking the full brunt of the blast, was thrown back, spinning, airborne, and when she hit the ground she didn't move.  
  
Buffy struggled to get up, but she'd barely reached her knees when Kheper was standing before her, gloved hand spread out in front of her, and it was like he was drilling into her head for oil, boring through her brain, crushing her, leaving her uncertain whether her skull was about to implode or her brains were about to explode.  
  
"I *will* succeed," Kheper snarled. "I will see this miserable world burn if I have to pry the portal open with bare hands. And you will pay in *blood* for defying me."  
  
"Know how many ... Big Bads ... said that?" Buffy asked, forcing the words past a jaw that refused to open. "Know ... what they all ... have in common?"  
  
Kheper smiled now, fangs gleaming, eyes glittering silver and red, flashing like a neon sign.  
  
Buffy took one more tortured breath under the glow of the hand device, and spat out, "This."  
  
Her left hand snapped up, catching the hand with the gauntlet, yanking it away from her head, and her right hand slammed into his chest, twisted, and came back out.  
  
Mister Pointy gleamed in her hand, wet with vampire blood.  
  
Kheper grunted, looked down, and hissed. Buffy brought up her legs and kicked, throwing him back, ripping the gauntlet from his hand.  
  
The would-be god clasped his hands to his chest and howled in pain, eyes flaring as he clutched at the wound. He staggered forward, then sank to his knees, skin beginning to crack.  
  
It was slower than normal, Buffy observed; perhaps the snake was trying to stave off the inevitable, prolonging the agony of the vampire's doom. She felt a pang of pity for him, then remembered the first time she saw him, invading her home, casually dealing out death and destruction, and pity gave way to grim satisfaction.  
  
Finally, the creature collapsed, eyes flaring red, then white, then fading to a dull ashen gray. Kheper's body held its form a moment longer before slowly collapsing under its own weight, dust beginning to blow in the wind.  
  
Buffy sat back hard, drained, feeling like she'd just finished a marathon. "Breathe deep," she heard Daniel Jackson advise. "It takes a while to get over that thing."  
  
"You've been through it?" Buffy asked weakly.  
  
"Oh, yeah. More often than I want to admit," Daniel said.  
  
"Is it normal to feel like your brain just got put through the Cuisinhart after getting hit with one of those?" Buffy asked, sliding her left hand into her pocket absently.  
  
O'Neill rolled over from where Riley was bandaging his neck, looking over at Carter, who was being tended by Giles and Xander. "You're lucky. Snake-heads generally don't like to stop with one of those things until your brains get frapee'd. If you can stop it in time, yeah, it hurts like hell, but trust me, there's worse -- LOOK OUT!"  
  
The warning, while given in the first possible instant, was far too late to stop what happened. From the ashes of the body of the Scarab of Ra, a writhing eel-like creature had slithered its way to the surface, coiled itself behind Buffy's back, and now sprang--  
  
--only to stop violently in midair, its teeth snapping at empty air barely a millimeter from the back of Buffy's neck.  
  
Buffy brought the snake around, caught tightly in her grip, and looked closely at it. This was the face of her enemy, she realized. Behind the minions, beneath the trickery, beyond the elegant face, this was the *thing* that had tried to kill her, kill her friends, kill her world, slaughter everything she was Chosen to protect.  
  
"You need this thing alive?" she called out.  
  
"Not particularly!" Daniel answered.  
  
"No way!" O'Neill shouted.  
  
Buffy turned from them to the writhing snake in her grip, narrowing her eyes, frowning at it as it shrieked and struggled.  
  
"Give my regards to King Tut," she said, softly but very clearly, and tightened her grip.  
  
The snake thrashed more violently, its shrieks rising, and then with a sickening *crunch* it went limp. Buffy stood at last, gave one long look to the thing in her hand, and tossed it aside in disgust.  
  
"Give my regards to King Tut?" Xander echoed incredulously. "Where'd *that* come from? Buff, I gotta tell you, you're losing your edge on the quippage here."  
  
"Hey, my brain's stir-fried," Buffy said petulantly. "It was all I could think of."  
  
"Yeah, but that's not even tired-Buffy talk," Xander persisted. "That's, like, lame movie action hero talk. Back me up here, Colonel?"  
  
"I'm not saying a word," Jack O'Neill muttered. "Not ... one ... word."  
  
"Jack, didn't you say that to--"  
  
"Don't even, Daniel."  
  
"But--"  
  
"Ah!"  
  
end part thirteen 


	14. Epilogue: The Serpent and the Hunter

Epilogue  
  
September 2000  
  
"Teal'c's going to be okay," O'Neill said over his beer. "Dr. Frazier said that whatever they were doing to him on that mothership, it may have hurt like all holy hell, but it didn't do any permanent damage."  
  
"He should be cleared to go back to duty in a couple of days," General Hammond said as he tended the grill. "He's a tough kid, Jacob."  
  
"I know," Jacob Carter said softly, opening a beer bottle and perusing the meats and vegetables on the platter on Hammond's porch. "I'm glad he's doing well, but ... you know that's not why I'm here."  
  
"What else could there be?" O'Neill asked.  
  
"The Tok'ra saw the report of the mystery Goa'uld that popped up in California last month. Couldn't help but notice that the report was ... well, kind of sparse."  
  
O'Neill shrugged. "What's to tell? We heard that a snake-head popped his head above ground. We came, we saw, we greased it. No big deal."  
  
Hammond sighed. "The Pentagon's been on my case about that report, too, Jack. They expect a little more detail than that, especially when it happens in United States territory, and some eyebrows got raised with your requisitions."  
  
"Look, he was dug in deep and we had to blast him out. What's the big deal?"  
  
"We still don't know what he was doing," Jacob said. "We found some old records on Kheper, and everything says he was an ambitious, dangerous character. Anise said that whatever he had planned, it was probably going to be spectacular."  
  
"It was," O'Neill said sharply. "Which is why we can't afford to let her, or the Pentagon, or anybody who doesn't already know, find out just what was happening."  
  
"What if it's something that can be used against the Goa'uld?" Jacob asked, only his voice had gone deep and reverberating.  
  
"The only people it can be used against are *us*," O'Neill answered sharply. "Kheper found some sort of dimensional rift that could have wiped out the human race, and he was maybe a day away from opening it up."  
  
"And this could happen at any time?"  
  
"I don't think so. The people who were watching it there said that some pretty specific things had to happen for that to come about."  
  
"How often does that happen?" Hammond asked darkly.  
  
"The local expert said that the conditions for opening the rift wouldn't line up again for another three hundred years."  
  
"And you believed him?" Hammond said.  
  
"Of course not. He was lying through his teeth, I knew it, and I'm pretty sure he knew I knew it. He probably doesn't trust the government to keep that information close, and I can't say I blame him."  
  
"But if the Tok'ra could figure out how to open up a rift like that on one of the Goa'uld worlds--"  
  
"Jacob, didn't you hear me? If you head to Los Angeles, turn north on the Pacific Coast Highway, and head up the road a couple of hours, you will find the planet Earth's damned self-destruct switch."  
  
"And you think the Tok'ra would let that kind of a secret out?"  
  
"Like you guys have never been compromised? Jake, if I could get this hypnotized out of my head, I would, but I can't."  
  
"Come on, Jack. We can protect that."  
  
"Does that come with an ironclad, money-back, un-destroy-the-planet guarantee if it gets leaked to Apophis?"  
  
No answer.  
  
"I didn't think so. Look, I'm not doubting your intentions, but you've got to admit that if Anise had bothered to check your guys instead of assuming that no Tok'ra could have been compromised, we wouldn't have ended up with Martouf dead on the Gate ramp -- and let's not forget how well that plan of yours to get Apophis and Heru'ur at each other's throats turned out."  
  
"Now that's not fair, Jack."  
  
"No, it's not. War never is." O'Neill took a sip of his beer. "Look, there's no way it can help us in the war out there; all it can do is cause us trouble. Ergo, nobody else needs to know. I'm not saying anything to anyone else, I know General Hammond's not about to ... you're not, are you, sir?"  
  
"No, Jack. I can just imagine what the NID would do with it."  
  
"And I've got to trust that you won't leak it out to the Tok'ra. That goes double for Selmak."  
  
Jacob stood still for a moment, and then slowly nodded. "All right."  
  
"What about Selmak?"  
  
Jacob took a breath, and when he let it out, his eyes flashed a moment. "Agreed," he said in the deep voice of the symbiote.  
  
Jack nodded and lifted his beer. "Here's hoping that's the last we ever hear of that godforsaken town, okay?"  
  
The two generals lifted their beer bottles, touched the necks together solemnly to Jack's, and then all three drank to it.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
Buffy opened her eyes with a nearly audible *click*. Riley moved in his sleep next to her.  
  
She reluctantly left the warmth of her bed, slipped on her clothes, and then quietly opened up her weapons chest, drawing out stakes, cross, and holy water.  
  
Her hand came upon the ornate gauntlet next to one of her holy water vials, and she pondered for a moment why she'd kept it in the first place. It hadn't been a conscious thought, just a momentary impulse that had led her to pocket the glove she'd ripped from the hand of the creature that was tearing her mind apart. The government had swept through the area in the days afterwards, carting away blackened artifacts and bits of rubble, looking for anything out of the ordinary that had survived in the crater.  
  
They probably had been looking for things like the glove.  
  
Why had she kept it? Was it so she'd know what to look for if she ever encountered one again?  
  
Or was it a hunter's instinct, like one of those men who'd shoot a deer and mount its antlers over a fireplace?  
  
It bothered her that she didn't have the answer, but the question faded as she quietly made her way out of the bedroom.  
  
She looked at the storage room next to her bedroom, and unbidden, the words Faith had spoken to her once in a dream came back. "Little Miss Muffet, counting down from seven-three-oh..."  
  
What did *that* mean?  
  
Buffy shook her head as she tiptoed down the stairs, out the door, and onto Revello Drive. There was too much she didn't understand, she thought as she flitted from shadow to shadow, approaching the first cemetery. She'd have to ask Giles about it. Ask about some of the other lost truths about the Slayer.  
  
Then she saw the ground in front of a tombstone shift, and conscious thought was forgotten.  
  
The hunt was on.  
  
* * * * * * *  
  
In the weapons chest by Buffy's bed, the unearthly gauntlet lay forgotten in a dark corner next to a vial of holy water, quiet, dormant.  
  
Waiting.  
  
fin  
  
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author's afterword:  
  
There's a lot of people to thank for this.  
  
First, the gang at the Cross and Stake board, who encouraged me in my first fanfic efforts, and helped me get up to speed on the Buffyverse.  
  
Then the reviewers who found this on fanfiction.net and stuck with it for the past year.  
  
Mandolin deserves a major-league shout for helping me break a four-month logjam and get rolling on this again in the fall of 2002.  
  
Then, of course, there's Celli, and through her, the Horsechicks of the Apocalypse, for encouragement, good vibes as they found out who this loon was who'd popped up in their midst, and especially in Celli's case, for helping me through the last parts of writing this story.  
  
Of course, there's a list of people to thank who probably would be just as happy if I'd never written a word of this...  
  
Larry Bagby III as Larry.  
Voice Two as himself.  
Carmen Argenziano as Jacob Carter.  
Don S. Davis as General Hammond.  
Bailey Chase as Graham.  
Kristine Sutherland as Joyce.  
Emma Caufield as Anya.  
Marc Blucas as Riley.  
Amber Benson as Tara.  
James Marsters as Spike.  
Christopher Judge as Teal'c.  
Nicholas Brendon as Xander.  
Michael Shanks as Daniel Jackson.  
Alyson Hannigan as Willow.  
Amanda Tapping as Samantha Carter.  
Anthony Stewart Head as Giles.  
Richard Dean Anderson as Jack O'Neill.  
Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy.  
  
If they hadn't played the parts, and played them well, there would have been nothing on which to base the characters.  
  
And of course, one cannot forget the team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin for coming up with the concept of the Stargate, or Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner for turning it into superior television.  
  
Not to mention the creative godhood that is Joss Whedon.  
  
Thank you, one and all, and let's be careful out there.  
  
Signing off,  
  
Bruce (BK) (the irregular)  
bktheirregular@aol.com  
March 9, 2003  
  
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extended disclaimer:  
  
Characters are owned either by Mutant Enemy Inc., Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, and 20th Century Fox Television; or Double Secret Productions, Gekko Film Corp., and Stargate SG-1 Productions.   
  
All characters used without permission and not for profit. This work may not be archived or reprinted except with the express written permission of the author. 


End file.
